


Release

by wintersday85



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, But with the Force, Canon-Typical Violence, Devoted Reylo, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Home Alone-style house protection, Ex-Con Ben Solo, F/M, First Kiss, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force suppression, Hurt/Comfort, Kylo Ren Redemption, Mild Language, Minor Character Death, Padme ships them, Past Child Abuse, Smol bean badass Rey, That's Not How The Force Works, Varykino, Virgin Ben Solo, some anxiety
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-03-13 18:03:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 68,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13576020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintersday85/pseuds/wintersday85
Summary: Modern AU. When Kylo Ren, crown jewel of criminal underworld the First Order, defects to save the life of his beloved grandmother Padmé, he brings the whole of the First Order empire crashing down with him in a literal ball of flame.When Ben Organa Solo, universally-despised heir to the Alliance's most scandal-plagued royal family, is released from an abridged prison sentence years later, he learns Padmé has left him the Naberrie’s summer retreat Varykino. Her final instructions: transform the estate into an inn for travelers on the famous Takodana Way, with the help of someone who once sought refuge there— a young woman with a big secret with whom Ben once shared a brief but powerful connection.To his astonishment, the indefatigable force of nature that is Rey Random grudgingly accepts his invitation to join him in the Lake Country...Until the deadly past he didn’t manage to fully kill catches up to them both.





	1. The Release

**Author's Note:**

> Some brief notes: 
> 
> -There are no formalized Jedi/Sith orders, but Force powers still exist, though at this point in time, their presence is very rare -- force users had long been the tools or targets of criminal networks. Force powers are generally viewed with suspicion by most average people, and great efforts have been taken to build Force Suppression technology. 
> 
> -For the purposes of this story, Varykino is on a peninsula, not an island, and there's a five-year age difference between Ben and Rey.

One would think that being granted parole nine years into a ten-year sentence at the Alliance of Free Republics' most infamous maximum security prison would be cause for celebration — relief, even.  
  
But as Ben Organa Solo was handed street clothes that he soon found were far too small to fit properly and was escorted to the doors of the Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center with only a box stuffed full of letters, he felt nothing but numbness and a cold, inexplicable fear.  
  
He hadn’t expected this; hadn’t even thought it was a _possibility,_ even as he’d been dragged from psychological examination to psychological examination that required more speaking than he’d done in five years, to a thorough cross-examination by a grim-faced parole board that seemed more likely to tame a Lylek than give him mercy. His ruling nearly a decade ago had been explicit: no opportunity for early release; no special treatment; no leniency.  
  
But after an hour of being force-fed the conditions around his parole (there were _many),_ signing paperwork with enough small print to make his head ache, and enduring unveiled threats from his newly assigned parole officer whose name Ben frankly didn’t even care to learn (“Listen up, pal, if you fail to secure a legitimate place of gainful employment within four weeks, I swear to you I will have your entitled, Vader-bred ass back in the darkest cell here for an extra half decade before you can _blink—“_ ), only one thought screamed through his brain:    
  
He wasn’t _ready_ for this.  
  
This morning, he’d traveled through the same well-worn motions borne of nearly a decade of repetitive, tightly-controlled movements. He’d been slightly irate, but mostly detached, when he’d been unexpectedly pulled from the required vocational training hour.... until he realized the _reason_ for his forcible removal. (Ben had initially loathed the courses for their saccharine wholesomeness amongst some of the planet’s worst offenders, but over the years he'd come to reluctantly admit he enjoyed them more than perhaps anything else the misery of isolated incarceration offered — he had already rotated through carpentry, two additional languages, landscaping and gardening, advanced finances and legal studies, stray animal training and fostering (thrice) and was now on new robotics programming.)  
  
Yes, real prison was as devastatingly lonely and hostile as any of the other prisons by another name in which Ben had spent the majority of his life, but at least it — _he_ — had been _stable_ , unburdened by the Force and those who wished to exploit him for it, for perhaps the first time.  
  
Now, he was being flung back out into an uncertain, friendless world that was equally, if not more, hostile to him without even a minute’s chance to prepare himself mentally for it, with a mandate to find employment within one month — and complete certainty that there was _no one_ on the entire planet who’d be willing to hire him once they heard his name.  
  
Even that — the very name he’d had to sign on his exit papers — had filled him with indecision. In his mind, he hadn’t been an Organa Solo since he’d been a child, though he didn't doubt the weight of that surname would be a yolk around his neck until the day he died. For much of his young adulthood, he’d embodied Kylo Ren. In prison, he’d been only a number, outside the whispers of the other inmates who referred to him by so many names, both hallowed and cursed, that he’d lost track.  
  
So he’d written Ben followed by a vague scribble, Ben with no last name and only a grandmother who’d called him by that moniker with love. Ultimately, it didn’t matter what he wrote, because this was all a trick, Ben was sure of it — a flagrant ploy to substantially extend the length of his sentence through his almost assured failure of meeting his egregious parole terms, and nothing more.  
  
The tank-like Veermok guards seemed to smell his fear, and relished in it in the same way they did their final opportunity to drag him by his arms to their will, this time to one of the Detention Center’s few exits. Over the years, Ben had learned his pride wasn’t worth the energy required to fight them.  
  
Instead, to his relief, as the double transparisteel doors came into view and the gloriously unbarred, golden light of sunset washed over him, the dark thoughts roiling within him ebbed and calmed.  
  
Finally, the truth settled into him from an angle that wasn’t terrifying.  
  
He was _leaving_ this place.  
  
And his grandmother… his grandmother was going to be _so happy._  
  
Ben blinked back the realization, the burning sensation of emotion searing his eyes for the first time since he’d been given this iota of freedom.  
  
When he’d first been incarcerated, Grandmother Padmé had visited him nearly every month, and written to him just as frequently — the only person who’d bothered corresponding with him at all. He'd carefully preserved each of her letters from the last decade in the box he held now, every one a precious reminder of the fact that to one person on this planet, just one, he mattered, and, impossibly -- that he was loved. But in the last few years, age had not been kind to his grandmother, and it had been over a year since he’d last seen her, after she’d become too frail to make the journey between Hosnia to Coruscant. The last letter he'd received "from Grandmother" three months ago had reassured him she was doing as well as she could -- but it, like all correspondence from the past two years, had been written in his mother's hand, and Ben had instantly distrusted it.  
  
Now, though, now he could at last come to Padmé, surprise _her._

Yes, if he simply had the chance of embracing, taking care of his beloved grandmother in person before he was unceremoniously thrown back in prison, this would all be worth it.  
  
At the thought of it, something that felt almost like _joy_ slowly tugged at his chest… until the briskly chilled air of a Coruscant winter struck him harshly as the prison doors opened, snapping him out of the day’s shocked stupor and back to something resembling rationality.  
  
The journey to Hosnia was two days’ drive away, and he hadn’t a credit to his name and nothing on him beside his ill-fitting clothing, the Force suppression and tracking bindings, and his identification.  
  
“Don’t I get a call,” he said flatly, turning back toward the guards as they roughly deposited him outside. His strained throat felt like it was filled with gravel; his croaky voice unrecognizable to him.  
  
One of the guards curled her lip at him. “Should have asked earlier,” she sneered. “Outside this door, you’re owed nothing, First Order _filth._ ” Her lips turned upward in an icily amused smile as she looked him over. “No doubt you’ll be back like a broken bantha just like the rest of them as soon as you violate parole. There isn’t a single person outside the underworld who’s going to want a monster like _Kylo Ren_ on their payroll.”

Ben couldn't find a single word to disagree with her.  
  
The doors locked behind him with a sharp ring of finality, and he was left standing outdoors in the bright, unbroken light of sunset, surrounded by Coruscant’s towering skyscrapers and the loud sounds of a crush of traffic.  
  
The guard’s harshly delivered truth faded as the sinking rays of sunlight settled on his ghostly pale skin, for the first time in _years_ unfiltered by shaded, transparisteel windows. Ben closed his eyes, drinking in the warmth of it, and a soft gasp of breath whooshed past his lips that he didn’t know he was holding — _had_ been holding, for years, even.  
  
_Alone_ — he was alone, unrestrained by the chains that had hindered his free movement for a decade; no voices in his head whispering dark deeds and observing his every move; no voices outside him judging him harshly and always without the full truth.  
  
Not quite free, but… on his own, utterly and completely, for perhaps the first time. A back door; a quiet exit without the media pressing in screaming questions and First Order victims spitting hatred (not unfairly). That, in and of itself, was an immense mercy.  
  
“Ben Solo.”  
  
At the unexpected female voice to his left, his stomach clenched, and the muscles of his shoulders tightened as quickly as they’d slumped.  
  
Not even one kriffing _second_ of anonymity. Not one.  
  
His hands tightened automatically around the letter-stuffed shoebox, denting it slightly, as he stiffly turned.  
  
A caramel skinned-woman stood several meters away at nexus of sidewalk meeting cement, a gleaming black sedan with tinted windows running beside her. She was wearing a tailored grey suit, a mass of dark hair piled into a thick elaborate bun at the top of her head, and there was something familiar about her… a faded memory from a time long ago.  
  
When she saw his attention sweep to her, she began crisply, “My name is Korr Sella—“  
  
“I know who you are,” Ben said flatly.  
  
The image was clearer now, of this young woman standing beside his mother, at the time a senior commander of the Alliance of Free Republics' Special Intelligence, as the woman who had birthed him had watched from afar, face impassive, as Ben’s sentence had been read. Leia hadn't made any attempt to contact him since.  
   
Sella had been his mother's assistant at the time, one with her own particular set of covert skills. His eyes flicked over her with practiced ease; he didn’t see any overt weapons but knew she would never leave them visible.  
  
He should have known Leia Organa had somehow been behind his early release; that she would expect something back from him in return.  
  
Despite her Intelligence trailing, the woman before him seemed visibly startled and unnerved by his raspy, toneless interruption and his blatant lookover. _Good_. Let her remember her fear of him, so he could find his own way to Hosnia without any trouble.  
  
Unfortunately, Sella didn’t take the hint that his aggressively _‘get lost’_ posture was radiating. “Solo," she repeated tightly, sounding even more uncomfortable, her expression pinched, "Get in the car and come with me."  
  
The brief, harsh bark of laughter that broke past his lips startled them both. “You must be delusional,” he retorted, scorn unfeigned. As if _she_ could order him, and he’d rather shoot himself than willingly go anywhere his mother wanted him to; didn’t even want to begin to consider what Leia expected from him —  
  
“It’s your grandmother.”  
  
At her tone, Ben’s bitter thoughts froze. The setting sun finally slipped behind one of the metal giants around them, and an icy dread sliced through his body as he was left in only the frosty air of the fading day.  
  
“What?” he croaked, the word torn harshly from his throat.  
  
Sella squared her shoulders, as if his response had returned some of her confidence. “Get in the car. I’ll tell you then.”  
  
“You’ll tell me _now,”_ he countered, and it was so easy to slip into the persona of Kylo Ren as he swiftly advanced upon her until his towering size could lend its full persuasive power. _“What about my grandmother?”_  
  
Fear flickered across the Intelligence officer’s paling face as she recoiled from him, her hand flying to her waist — _hidden firearm,_ he deduced swiftly. But then her gaze dropped from the jagged scars across his face to his neck... to the harsh, dark metal band of the Force Suppression collar locked permanently in place. At the visible reminder that he could no longer access his Force powers, her stance straightened, though only just.  
  
“She’s dying.”  
  
At once, all the air rushed from Ben’s lungs as surely as if he’d been simultaneously punched in the gut by every guard and inmate in his detention block. The large hands clutching the box spasmed, and a rush of panicked darkness crushed at his chest, momentarily blocking his ability to form words.  
  
“How long?” he finally managed.  
  
Sella’s lips pressed together. “A few days at most, they think. So if you want to see her before she passes from this life,” she continued, an infuriatingly knowing gleam entering her dark eyes, “you’ll get in the car. If not, you can freeze on the streets of Coruscant, for all I care. We both know what that decision would do to her.”  
  
Without another word, the woman moved around him, crossing behind the vehicle toward the other rear door.  
  
The moment she turned away, the careful cap Ben had kept on his reaction fell away. Pure anguish the likes of which even he was rarely familiar exploded through his chest; his lips parted in a pained gasp at the strength of the grief that wracked his body, and he bent double, one hand flashing to grip the sedan’s sleek finish for support.  
  
A few days. After nine years — and so much longer than that, really— the most time he would have to freely spend with the only person in his life who had ever cared for him, had _loved_ him unerringly and without condition, was a few _days._  
  
And that was if he even made it to her in time.  
  
As Sella’s door slammed shut, Ben squeezed his burning eyes shut and brought his clenched fist to his teeth, forcing himself to breathe, to suck back inside himself all evidence of vulnerability and the rollercoaster of emotional agony he was feeling after months and years of isolated drudgery and numbness. Rarely had he so longed for the physical mask of Kylo Ren that had been destroyed the same night everything else had so spectacularly come falling down. Despite his best efforts, he knew his eyes would always reveal everything his face didn’t.  
  
Without wasting another moment wallowing in his own inadequacies, Ben grasped the sedan’s rear door handle, opened it wordlessly and stiffly slid inside beside his mother’s personal retriever, his jaw clenched so tightly it ached.  
  
For the sake of his grandmother, he would hide himself behind a mask and another name and surrender to the darkness that had always lurked within him; be tortured, belittled in the name of strengthening his resolve and power; steal, extort, maim and kill; suffer with the shame and guilt and self-loathing that committing those deeds brought him; murder the master who had trained him and believed owned him mind, body, and soul; bring the whole of the most powerful criminal syndicate in the world crashing to its knees; and then be severed from the very Force that had at once brought his life such pain and yet was part of the fabric of him, had sustained him through the worst.

For the sake of his grandmother, he would do anything.  
  
Even this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been SUCH a fan of the Rey/Ben fanfiction produced here, and am so excited to dive into the wonderful world of Reylo! I am a writer who is very much driven by comments and feedback and the singular joy of learning your reactions to each chapter, so please, please don't hesitate to review along to let me know what you think of the story. 
> 
> Ben's reunion with Padme and some hints of Reylo coming up next!


	2. The Return

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Trigger warning, just in case:** Minor character death and mentions of an anxiety attack within the first scene (can read around the anxiety attack if you jump from, "a predetermined, pathetic end to a largely miserable, pathetic life" to "The greatest kindness he’d ever received from a stranger.")

_**Three and a half years ago**_  
_  
  
_My dear grandson,_  
  
_It’s one of our favorite times of year here at Varykino — the Monarchs have yet again descended upon the Lake Country in all their orange and black glory. They have a remarkable sensitivity to the ebb and flow of the seasons, and have predictably arrived just as the gardens burst into bloom two weeks early. Maz tells me that roughly half the peninsula is covered this year! It’s at moments like this that I miss you so very much and wish you could be here to see it. Promise me, lamb, that you will come stay and experience another migration with me once you've left the Center._  
  
_I expect you’ve noticed my handwriting has changed substantially between my last letter to you and this one. Well, you know my view on impeccable penmanship, and my hands have grown a little more unsteady than I would prefer — the delights of age, nothing to worry about. So I’ve recruited a transcriber to whom I can now dictate my letters to you. She’s an absolute ray of light from the far western reaches, and she’s been a great help to me these past several months as I've continued to explore how to more formally open Varykino's doors to the Takodana Way travelers. I’ve encouraged her to take a sentence to introduce herself, but she looks a little embarrassed and is shaking her head, so I’ll continue._  
  
_Oh. She would like for me to inform you that she will mark anything she’s written that I haven’t dictated to her with her initial, so you won’t think she’s writing the entire letter without my direct input._  
  
_(On that note, apologies for the chicken scratch — your grandmother’s handwriting, even with age, is a work of art in comparison. Not entirely sure why she selected me for this, not that I mind! —R)_  
  
___  
  
**_Today_**  
___  
  
Ben had to grudgingly admit there was no way in hell he’d have ever made it to Hosnia as expediently as he did with Leia’s escort, even as well-acquainted as he had once been with the shadowy, less-than-legal transportation channels that ran between the major cities of the Alliance of Free Republics. (He was certain his shoot-first, arrest-later sadist of a parole officer would have been thrilled if the first movement he’d made upon release had been to descend upon the First Order’s old stomping grounds.)  
  
Korr Sella hadn’t made any effort to speak or look directly at him since he’d entered the vehicle, nor provided any further information on his grandmother’s condition, so Ben endured the silent drive desperately trying to stifle the tumult of panic and grief roiling through him with a ferocity he hadn’t experienced in years; had not been prepared to handle now.  
  
When his Grandmother took the drastic step of closing Varykino permanently and moving all the way to Hosnia, a city he knew she hated, to be closer to his parents, he should have known there was more to it than that. That it was getting closer to the end. The great irony was that if there was one thing he had learned beneath the mask of Kylo Ren, it was that death would, often at the most unexpected moments, come for all of them.  
  
He’d never once allowed himself to consider the truth that one day, when circumstances were at last well and truly out of his control, it would also come for Padmé Amidala.  
  
He hated the telling, watery emotion that hadn’t stopped stinging his eyes, though relievedly never falling. Though the situation was completely different, he longed again for the protection Kylo Ren’s mask had brought during the execution of the darkest deeds that Ben Solo hadn't wanted to commit, when his tears had often flowed openly behind it throughout the violence and destruction he’d left in his wake.  
  
For anyone, but especially someone as close to his parents as Sella, to see him so vulnerable, so soft, was simply not an option.  
  
A thousand thoughts swirled through his mind:  
  
How long had his grandmother been _near_ _kriffing death?_  
  
Was it cancer? Heart disease? Another terminal illness?  
  
Was she in pain? Was she conscious, still cognizant? Had she asked for him?  
  
_Why hadn’t anyone told him before now_ that she was getting worse?  
  
Was there a chance that her diagnosis was wrong, that she could recover?  
  
He quickly squashed that foolish line of thought, dismissing it as irrational fantasy. For as much and as long as Leia and he had never seen eye-to-eye, he knew she loved her mother — much more than she ever had Ben — and would have recruited only the best doctors in the whole of the Alliance for Padmé’s care. If they thought her condition so dire that people — _his parents,_ his mind supplied the impossible-sounding specifics — had gone through efforts he quite frankly couldn’t image to secure his parole…  
  
“Is this why I was released early,” he said flatly. Not a question.  
  
Sella jerked slightly, as if honestly she hadn’t expected him to speak again. She tensed, hand pulsing toward her side, and shifted to eye him warily as if he was a thinly-restrained, rabid animal. “I'm not at liberty to —”  
  
With a frustrated growl, Ben slammed his right fist into the back of the front passenger seat so hard it jerked forward with a sickening crack, ignoring the pain that exploded through his hand as his simmering worry and frustration boiled over. “It's a only simple, innocent _question,_ damn it!”  
  
In a flash, her stun gun was out and pointed directly at him. “Stand down, Solo!”  
  
Ben froze mid-snarl, his hands still clenched in fists at his side.  
  
Despite her minute weapon advantage, her voice wavered, and she reeked of fear, which would make her sloppy. In such close quarters, he swiftly estimated he had an 80% chance of disarming her before she could immobilize him.  
  
He also knew there was a 50% chance of never being allowed anywhere near his grandmother if he did, and at least a 20% chance (or perhaps higher, if he'd paid closer attention that afternoon) of being thrown back in the faded artificial light of his Central Detention cell immediately if he was stunned just once by law enforcement.  
  
So Ben remained immobile of his own volition, stewing in an unholy rage beneath her shaken yet steely gaze.  
  
Since he was a child, everyone had always, _always_ treated him as if he were the monster without a single human thought or feeling, something to be avoided, feared, suppressed, bullied, sent away, leashed and destroyed. Had any of them in their morally superior righteousness ever once paused to consider that some monsters were made and not born — that, to a small, lonely boy who’d only wanted to be loved and accepted, the real monster was _them?_  
  
“My Grandmother, for whom I destroyed an entire criminal empire that not even your _government_ could touch, is dying,” he gritted out, fist balling around the box of Padmé’s letters in his lap. “The least you can do is give me one _kriffing_ answer.”  
  
At least a minute passed before Sella lowered the stunner, but only slightly. Her hand, and the white case of the weapon, was shaking lightly.  
  
“It may have been a factor in your early parole,” she said tautly. Carefully.  
  
Ben’s jaw tightened further. The confirmation only strengthened his theory that the high-ranking officers of the Center’s parole board had only released him under a temporary guise of mercy — the convenient circumstance of his grandmother’s death. They had made it clear this morning that they believed he deserved far worse than the original sentencing court had given him, when his critical role in helping dismantle the First Order’s upper echelons and pervasive criminal network, as well as Snoke’s exploitation of him that had begun when he’d only just turned fifteen, had been heavily considered.  
  
Ever-so-slightly, his shoulders hunched inward protectively as a different sort of fear settled like a heavy stone in his stomach.  
  
No, with the duristeel tracking and comms cuffs practically soldered around his wrists, the Alliance would monitor him closely, bide their time, possibly even sabotage any effort he made to secure employment, and when the inevitable moment came that he walked into the trap of violating one of the countless, ridiculous parole terms they'd so painstakingly drafted, he had no doubt he’d be thrown behind bars for at least another decade — if not until the day he died.  
  
The tight quarters of the small sedan suddenly seemed impossibly small and the stink of fresh leather closed in around him. Yes, he'd been terrified walking out of the repetitive, largely predicable daily cycle of maximum security, but now that he'd had a taste of the sunlight’s warmth on his skin for the first time in a decade, he realized with a sharp, terrible ache that he didn't want to go back, didn't want to spend however many wretched days he had left ushered around dim metal hallways in restraints and confined to a sliver of an interior cell.  
  
But in that moment, Ben could see his entire future lay out before him just as it had been from birth — burdened with an equally hallowed, equally horrific legacy he’d never asked for and only one way it could all go: a predetermined, pathetic end to a largely miserable, pathetic life.  
  
His fingers dug into his knees as claustrophobia and anxiety spasmed in his chest, creeping upward to claw at the precious stability his mind had found in the final years of his prison sentence.  
  
Ben hadn’t had a full-blown panic attack in nearly three years, and his stomach turned at the sense of dread crawling and then ripping at the edges of his mind at the knowledge he couldn’t afford to have one now, couldn't lose control in a tiny car where one wrong movement or word could cause him to lose everything.  
  
He had to stop it. He _had_ to stop it.  
  
In an abrupt motion, Ben made himself to sit up rigidly before Sella could see the defeated, terrified slump that threatened to curl his shoulders into a defensive ball; if the Intelligence agent was startled by it, he didn’t care. He knew what he had to do to calm himself down, if only he could direct his frantically scrabbling mind to do it.  
  
Gritting his jaw, he locked his stare onto the headrest in front of him and slowly, rhythmically forced air through his lungs. Clenching sweat-dampened hands to keep them from shaking, he imagined _her_ touch first — the gentlest tendrils of the Force soothingly caressing his face in wordless reassurance.  
  
The greatest kindness he’d ever received from a stranger.  
  
His eyes closed at the memory of it, and the panicked darkness was quickly replaced by hers, a flash of hazel amidst freckled, sun-kissed skin that seemed to glow with the incandescent beauty of the light side of the Force, enveloping him, cradling him; such pure, powerful _light_ it had taken his breath away, at once so alien and yet so unspeakably comforting and safe that it was akin to the energy he’d always felt during his short stays with his Grandmother at Varykino — the only place he’d ever considered home.  
  
At that moment, something tense and terrified in his brain righted itself, anchoring back steady, and Ben gulped in a soft, shuddery breath of relief. Without pause, he reached for his other anchor — the lyrical, lilting voice of his grandmother, singing his child self through nightmares, through panic, through confusion and fear and dread:  
  
_Hush now baby don't you cry  
Rest your wings my butterfly  
Peace will come to you in time  
And I will sing this lullaby…_  
  
Over and over, he repeated the lyrics, the soothing sound of Padmé’s dignified voice, until, unbidden, the murmur of another, younger woman’s voice that had never been spoken aloud drifted through his mind— a memory that haunted him in his waking moments and in his dreams, like a shadow he could never shake, an inexplicable emptiness he’d never known had needed filling:  
  
_Don't be afraid. Whatever’s happening, I feel it too._  
  
It wasn’t until the car stopped moving, the abrupt stop jarring him from his mind, that he realized the overwhelming panic he’d felt was completely gone. And for the first time since Sella had spoken the news of his grandmother’s imminent passing, he believed in the possibility they would reach her before that happened.  
  
As they transferred from the vehicle to a slim, unmarked Class V Cantonica Carrier private jet with a sharp, custom white-leather interior he didn’t recognize, Ben remained remarkably calm, as if he had inadvertently managed to stumble upon the eye of the hurricane that comprised the shock and horror and grief and raw fear tumbling and swirling inside him like a maelstrom.  
  
It was perhaps due to his awareness of this fact that the visibility skittish cabin crew’s horrified reactions to him seemed all the more noticeable.  
  
After serving Korr Sella, who was seated stiffly in the luxuriously wide seat across the aisle of the small but state-of-the-art cabin, the middle-aged attendant wearing professional dress but no other indication as to his employer visibly hedged for at least forty-five seconds, shooting uncomfortable looks over his shoulder at his two female colleagues leaning out of the service alcove, who returned the wordless communication with taut, unreadable expressions of their own, before he took a single, silent step sideways toward Ben, his face grim.  
  
Ben lifted his head to evenly meet his gaze.  
  
For five seconds too long, the flight attendant’s eyes lingered on the right side of Ben’s face with a sort of horrified fascination — at the sharp, vivid scars and burns from the night he’d burned the heart of the First Order down that scraped all the way from his forehead to his neckline and down his shirt. With his hulking form and Force Suppression collar and cuffs, lank, midnight black hair falling into a deathly pale, scarred and homely visage shadowed with isolation and insomnia, Ben supposed he looked every inch the dark side monster the world viewed Darth Vader’s grandson to be.  
  
He knew well enough he could have deliberately intimidated this man, easily seizing upon his fear, but the thought of being that person right now made his stomach crawl, and he found he simply didn’t want to. Instead, as he smelled the mouthwatering scent of the steaming, savory puff pastry that Sella had opened in her seat but hadn’t touched, he realized he actually was hungry, possibly for the first time since he’d been incarcerated.  
  
“I’ll have a black decaf coffee and whatever she has, please,” he said with a nod toward Sella. The epitome of politeness, if only for the passing satisfaction of proving this man’s distorted view of him _wrong._  
  
For a moment, the attendant stared at him as if he’d grown horns. “Er—“ The noise that left his throat resembled that of a choking massiff. “We’re out of those. _Sir,”_ he added savagely through gritted teeth in the poshest of the five Coruscanti accents.  
  
Ben’s gaze flicked to the flight attendants’ service alcove and the clear glass box of pastries on the counter, visible past the two other crew members standing in front of it stealing all-too-familiar glances of unease, hatred and disgust. At his notice, they instantly paled and flung the cream-colored curtain back in place.  
  
“…murdered _thousands_ of people; no one’s found them since…” he heard a woman's voice hiss shrilly.  
  
As greatly exaggerated as the majority of whispers about him were, something stirred in his gut, and he swallowed it down.  
  
“It doesn’t look like you’re out of them,” he noted instead, as calmly as he could.  
  
“Well we are, _ever_ so sorry!” the man responded tightly, as if his fight-or-flight response couldn’t decide upon which of the two approaches it wanted to take.  
  
At his side, Ben’s hand clenched, the slight, too-tight pull of once-charred skin stretching tautly over his knuckles.  
  
He saw Korr Sella stop picking at her dinner, her hand hovering near the stun gun that now openly lay on the tray beside her.  
  
He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, leashing his temper. “What _do_ you have, then?” he asked shortly. He hadn't had anything to drink since seven that morning, and his dry throat only perpetuated his voice’s gravelly croak of disuse.  
  
The perfectly innocuous question seemed to throw the flight attendant further off-kilter. “Nothing.”  
  
“Your forty million credit luxury jet has nothing on it to consume,” Ben repeated, deadpan.  
  
Sweat beaded at his temples. “Of course we have drinks!” he shot back, as if suddenly struck with the need to defend his assigned craft.  
  
Ben’s jaw worked tautly, his control spooling thin. “Then, as I said before, a coffee. Decaf. Black. Please.” _Please, for the love of the_ Force, _just go away._  
  
The man scowled in response, but, to his relief, hurriedly scuttled back to the serving curtain, disappearing behind it. Immediately, a cacophony of harsh but unintelligible whispers became audible over the plane’s low hum.  
  
A decent indication, Ben thought, that his mere presence alone, even at his calmest and most respectful, was going to continue to trigger and terrify almost every person he encountered for the rest of his life.  
  
Unbidden, unwanted, a blast of raw, blinding loneliness punched hard at his chest. His eyes burned harshly, and he rapidly blinked back any chance for the emotion in them to slip down his face, sharply pivoting his chair from Sella’s direction to face the windows.  
  
He let out a long breath, gripping too tightly at the wide, polished wooden arms of custom-crafted chair. Desperate for distraction, he stared out at the clouds, small, orange and gold-tinted puffs dotting the fading cityscape of Coruscant far below as they flew southeast with the remaining light of day. Between the First Order’s literal underground and primarily night dealings and an all-interior high-security prison, he hadn’t seen something like this for so long, and some visceral, long-dead part of his soul flickered back to life at the recognition that it was stunningly beautiful.  
  
As a child, he’d loved this — flying with either his mother or father (not often together) when they traveled, the excitement of not being left behind per usual but accompanying them on a work trip or brief holiday, getting to explore new places and sights and smells in cities and towns where he could be surrounded by new, comforting crowds that didn’t know he was hiding a shameful secret.

But then flying had become a harbinger of abandonment, as his mother’s private jet carted him to and from a succession of elite boarding schools that didn’t want him just as much as he didn’t want to be there, and yet left him against his impassioned pleas to a succession of ever-worsening social experiences.    
  
By the time Snoke had granted him and the other Knights of Ren a sleek black Upsilon-class Transport to cart them across the Alliance to intimidate and assassinate, flying had lost all its joy, become a means to an unwelcome end and nothing more, and nightmarish stories had quickly spread of a towering masked specter swathed in black who wielded the feared, fabled weapon of terror the world had thought lost twenty years prior with the monster who'd built it, who, with only a flick of his hand, could swat aside an entire squadron of Enforcers like bowling pins and choke the life out of the most untouchable, hardened criminals of the Republic’s shadowed underbelly.  
  
A new Vader.  
  
The last time Ben had been on a plane, he had been chained, hooded, collared and drugged, transferred by heavy military escort from his trial and sentencing in Hosnia to the Central Detention Center in Coruscant.  
  
He hadn’t been allowed to see the sky then.  
  
They all thought the worst of him, Ben knew, his thoughts slipping back to the flight attendants, and by this point, he couldn't quite blame them for it. The First Order had been the world’s most powerful illegal arms manufacturer and trafficker, and he and the other Knights of Ren had been the brute, blunt instruments of terror used to demand loyalty and enforce control at its highest levels -- and not always behind closed doors.

He himself had continued to exploit this image long after the First Order had fallen: With his Force connection blocked, he would have been eaten alive in the Central Detention Center if he hadn’t maintained the four advantages he had left: his size, his intelligence, his notorious reputation as Kylo Ren, and the infamy of his breeding as Ben Skywalker-Organa-Vader-Solo.  
  
For nine years, through even the most tumultuous emotional cycles that left him otherwise curled in a broken, anguished mess when he was alone, he’d worked out religiously in his cell, making sure he looked broader, stayed physically stronger, and seemed mentally harder than the next maximum security occupant.  
  
But the truth was that the man who only viewed himself as Ben Amidala had no interest in violence, not anymore — not that he ever had, when he wasn’t simply trying to protect himself and then the very few people and things he loved, damn whether or not he came out alive at the end of it.  
  
He knew no one would believe that and so he never tried to explain it, but nor was he so self-righteous to believe that behavior borne of self-defense and protection could absolve him of the violence he’d committed for half a decade under the mask of Kylo Ren.

A false name and a false image — as if, by pretending to be someone else, the sixteen-year-old he'd been could detach himself enough from the awfulness of his actions to almost forget it was still Ben Solo who was doing them.  
  
“Are they gone?” he abruptly asked, surprising himself by voicing the question.  
  
Sella, who hadn’t stopped observing him with the tense, wary intensity of every guard and officer and soldier who’d ever monitored him, flinched in surprise at his words. She visibly steeled herself before she made him repeat the question -- another innocent inquiry that nonetheless only seemed to set her mental alarms to ‘high.’  
  
“Who are you referring to?” she asked, voice cautious.  
  
Ben should have thought there was only one obvious answer to that question. “The rest of the First Order,” he snapped, patience thin. “The last of the Senate and Trade Federation plants and loyalists, the Bank of the Alliance allies, the underbosses, the captains, the gunrunners, the sleepers, their small arms dealers in every country on this planet, the Starkiller and Mustafar manufacturing centers, the Jakku, Bespin and Scarif cartels; I can go on — has it all been uncovered, has it all been eradicated?”  
  
The expression on her face had become part palpably unsettled, part openly hostile, and part deeply suspicious. “Of course it has. For at least three years, now. Your mother ripped out the last of their vile roots herself."

Her tone held enough conviction that Ben believed she wasn’t lying — though whether or not she was privy to every detail of the operation was debatable. Still, he couldn’t stop the swift rush of utter relief that flooded his chest… and the faintest clench in his gut that, like the legendary Underworld Empire before it whose collapse left enough small pockets to feed the rise of the First Order, such a powerful and intricate criminal enterprise would never truly be completely gone.  
  
“You’ll need to change,” Sella said flatly then, interrupting the thought.  
  
Ben processed her words twice before fury flared within him, and he swept his gaze back to her with narrowed, dangerous eyes. How _dare_ this stranger believe she knew enough about him to lecture him on his errant ways—    
  
“There are clothes in the ‘fresher,” she continued, the surprising turn of direction jolting him from his rage response. She gestured toward the back of the plane before glancing over him once, expression one of contempt. “You’ll never be let near D’Qar Sky looking like that.”  
  
Ben half bristled, half slumped.  
  
_Perhaps he couldn't hold only other people at fault for believing the worst of someone._  
  
Then, Sella added, “And if you put this flight at risk or dare try anything while you’re out of my sight, I can promise you that you’ll never see your grandmother again.”  
  
His jaw clenched. While the threat’s deliverer was hardly a concern, ice crawled up his skin at the threat itself, at the power every government official and law enforcement officer held over him in this pivotal moment of familial crisis.  
  
_Or perhaps he could._  
  
Without another look at Sella, he stood abruptly. “You’ll be glad to know,” he murmured coldly, momentarily relishing how Sella’s fingers spasmed around her stun gun, “that you aren’t anywhere near important enough for me to waste my time.”  
  
Briefly, he glanced toward the curtain-covered service alcove, from which the flight attendants had not emerged again. For a moment, he considered simply walking over and picking up the full coffee pot he knows is there, but he expected that might very well get him thrown off the plane. While it was still at cruising altitude.  
  
The plane’s ‘fresher, though too small for his height and frame, was as luxurious as the rest of the craft, the opulent white marble counter flaked with gold. Either his mother had upgraded her collection with the windfall she’d made from disowning him when she’d learned of his double identity, he thought bitterly, or she’d been very well compensated for eliminating the remaining threads of the First Order — all thanks to _his_ sacrifices, _his_ information.  
  
While she’d left him to rot in prison without so much as a peep of anger, disappointment, hatred, or anything else. Without a single word of correspondence at all, when she was the kriffing _reason_ he’d ended up dumped at the doorsteps of the First Order.

With a bit too much aggression, he ripped the zipper down a silk clothing bag hanging beside the mirror.  
  
Disgust immediately curled in his stomach.  
  
Inside was a three-piece navy blue suit and shirt in exactly his size, surely as expensive as the Maker for the softness of the fabric and the designer brand on the tag, with a large-hooded dark brown dress coat that was clearly meant to help hide his facial features upon landing. On the floor sat coffee brown leather dress shoes that he could see in the warmly-lit space were custom stitched, and he was immediately struck with the urge to hurl them out the nearest emergency exit.  
  
He hated it instantly. All of it.  
  
They were the perfect clothing of a perfect image of a perfect son, the one Leia had really wanted, a charismatic yet normal boy who’d graduated from Midichlorian University with the highest honors and had followed her and Padmé’s path through the Senate and governorship, who wasn’t so sensitive to the Force he’d begun accidentally breaking expensive gifts from the prime ministers of the Alliance's premier member states when he was only two and tried to hide behind his father’s legs at parties rather than face the fancy-dressed people who never took notice of him anyway, except to comment critically about the size of his ears and awkwardness of his face.  
  
At the time, Padmé had claimed her twins had been born of artificial insemination, so the general consensus to every one of his flaws, and at times they seemed countless, had been, _“Perhaps he gets it from his grandfather.”_  
  
Little did they know, they’d been mostly right.  
  
Now, despite the immense discomfort of the prison-provided pants that were five inches too short and a suffocatingly tight, paper-thin shirt that he’d easily soaked through with a cold, anxious sweat earlier, Ben hedged long enough that he was surprised Sella didn’t knock down the door of the ‘fresher herself, torn between ripping the tailored clothing in half and shoving it down the toilet, and acquiescing to the unabashed ploy to make him assimilate.  
  
Eventually, Ben briefly, tiredly ran a hand over his face and released a long, heavy breath. As much as he detested Sella, he knew she was right — he would never be allowed anywhere near the luxury skyscraper that held his parents’ penthouse apartments wearing the clothing he was in, and he had no other options.  
  
For his grandmother. Only for his grandmother.  
  
He struggled to change in the tiny space, cursing vehemently as he banged the back of this head against a hanging gold light display not once but twice. The suit’s crisply pressed fabric felt alien and wrong, as if he was donning another costume and mask to simply live another lie, and a part of him thinks he would have been more comfortable in the hated Jedi Academy robes of his private boarding school days than 15,000 credit clothing.

He fumbled with the hideous royal blue and orange striped tie for another five minutes, trying to remember what in the Maker’s name to do with it and why in the hell anyone wore such a ridiculous and functionally unnecessary accessory anyway, before muscle memory returned to guide his hands.  
  
When Ben finally returned to his seat, feeling like a stranger in a strange land, a cup of coffee was waiting for him. It was already tepid, nearly white with milk and sugar, and, within taking a sip of it, he knew it was caffeinated.  
  
His throat was so parched, he drank it anyway.  
  
___

The caffeine had done him no favors, and the calm he’d felt three hours ago while boarding the jet had evaporated entirely. 

 _Every moment of the past five hours has only confirmed why I hated my childhood,_ Ben thought in disbelief as the latest monstrosity to grace his father’s auto collection, an ostentatious six-door silver luxury car that still reeked of fresh leather, maneuvered through the honking horns and packed city streets of Hosnia's Midtown district via the most careful, scrupulously law-abiding route possible.

With the time change, they'd arrived at a private government landing strip at the north end of Hosnia in the middle rush hour traffic, and Korr Sella, her lips pressed into a grim line, had begun to silently read and send a parade of text messages at a rate that had him seriously concerned.  
  
Perhaps it was because they were so close to his grandmother now that the potential outcome of arriving too late due to something as asinine as _traffic_ seemed leagues worse than never being given the opportunity to see her before her death at all.  
  
Ben leaned toward front of the vehicle, elevating his voice to be heard over the extended middle row of seats. “Can this piece of _junk_ go any faster?” he snarled, his nails digging small, painful crescents into the clenched palms of his hands.  
  
Immediately, his parents’ golden-haired, bespectacled chauffeur and butler Threepio, who’d driven his family with all the aplomb and instincts of a ninety-four-year-old man since Ben had been in the womb, let out a splutter of apology. “I’m _so_ sorry, Master Ben, the Corellian YT-2300 Extended Falcon has been clocked at over 165 miles per hour on the Kessel Run Test Track, but I’m afraid the odds of reaching anywhere near that speed on an intercity street at 5:45 PM are at least ten thousand to one…”  
  
As he spoke, the infuriating man leisurely slowed the vehicle for a yellow light without making any attempt to cross it before it turned red.  
  
Ben let out a hiss of frustration, slamming his hand on the seat. “Incompetent _imbecile—”_  
  
“Control yourself before I have to, Solo,” Sella muttered tightly, one hand still gripping the phone while the other had moved to clutch her half-hidden stunner. As if she wouldn’t have been a panicked mess herself had she received the news her mother or father or whoever the hell she cared about was on the verge of death.  
  
He stilled, frustration turning to barely-restrained rage as his hatred of this this car, this driver, this woman, this hoard of cars, and this city and the privileged, self-righteous people in it spread through his veins.    
  
“If you think that this entire farce of a journey has been me out of control,” he said in a slow, low voice, letting the loathing in his gaze wash over her, “then you, Agent Sella, are woefully naive.” As she paled again, he jerked his chin toward the phone in her hand, his jaw clenched. “Perhaps _you_ would be kind enough to share the news of what is happening to _my_ grandmother.”  
  
A beat of silence passed as the light turned green; traffic was so jammed that Threepio didn’t even bother to apply gas and simply continued muttering to himself, “Oh _dear,_ oh dear…”

Sella's hesitation was a second too long before she said crisply, “Director Organa will provide any updates to Her Majesty the Former Queen’s status once we arrive.”  
  
_Director_ Organa now, was it? Of course his mother had been promoted to the head of the Alliance of Free Republics' Special Intelligence Agency upon the First Order victory that had only been made possible by him.  
  
“Like hell she will. There’s something you’re not telling me about her _status,”_ he snarled, letting his contempt for the coldness of the referral curl around it. “What is it?”  
  
Sella’s firm voice wavered. “I don’t—”  
  
He leaned toward her, which made her shrink back against the nook where seat met door. _“What. Is. It?”_  
  
When Sella simply stared at him with frightened eyes, Ben knew something was terribly wrong.

He worked his now-aching jaw, contemplating his very limited options. Then, he said, slowly, evenly, “I am getting out of this car.”  
  
Immediately, the agent's eyes flew wide, and she wrenched up her stun gun.  
  
Ben stared it down without moving. “I am getting out of this car and walking the last four blocks there,” he continued as levelly as possible, “because you and I both know that it will take longer for this ludicrous vehicle to drive that distance in rush hour than for me to go on foot. If you don’t want an incident, and believe me, you will have one, you will get out now and come with me.”  
  
Even though he could no longer bend weaker minds to the power of his suggestions, it was a level-headed proposal that even Sella, in all her suspicion and distrust of him, couldn’t deny was reasonable.  
  
She slowly lowered her stunner and tucked it beneath her jacket, face pinched. “If you do _anything_ that—“  
  
“The last I checked, the Central Detention Center gave me my identification and told me I was free to go,” he interrupted testily, voice simmering with parts anger and accusation. “Or is there something you know that I don’t?”  
  
That shut her up, and Ben wrenched open the car door as the Extended Falcon began creeping forward, ignoring the startled yelp from the driver’s seat. Quickly tucking the box of Grandmother’s letters under his arm and flinging up the thigh-length coat’s generous hood, he stepped out into the cool Hosnia evening while the car was still moving. Within two steps, he’d crossed to the sidewalk and had turned north with long, sure strides, completely ignoring whether or not Sella was following him.  
  
What felt like a vice had locked around and begun to squeeze his heart tighter and tighter every second that passed that he wasn’t at his grandmother’s side. He prayed to the Force that he wasn’t already too late.  
  
__  
  
In Hosnia’s prime business district, the tailored blue suit and jacket served much the same as Kylo Ren’s black fatigues and cloak had the First Order’s midnight reckonings, and, with his face well hidden, the sea of well-dressed businesspeople around him swallowed him as if he was one of their own.  
  
He’d already been in boarding school when the Alliance’s capital had moved from the central grasslands of Nakadia to the humid, mild coastal plains of Hosnia, so he’d only set foot in his parents’ sprawling D’Qar Sky Luxury Villas real estate a grand total of perhaps six times before his arrest at age twenty.

That didn’t mean he didn’t know exactly where it was or five ways to break into and out of it, like a dormant memory just waiting to be accessed.

Two high-ranking Central Alliance bank officials who’d secretly served as First Order associates had residences at D'Qar, so the building had already been the scene of a number of dealings -- most friendly, a few not. Then, once the First Order had learned of his mother’s involvement in a quiet Alliance Special Intelligence effort to uncover the power structure and central mechanisms of their sprawling criminal enterprise -- "finding the head of the dragon," she'd called it -- Ben had been forced to learn every inch of the building’s schematics for… professional reasons.  
  
True to his estimate, it took him no more than five minutes to swiftly reach the instantly recognizable transparisteel high-rise, the glass windows gleaming a deep blue in the twilight. His burst of relief was short-lived, heart painfully pounding with worry and dread against his ribs, and he didn’t stop to wait for anyone before plunging toward the doors, face set into a hard glare.  
  
Too late, it occurred to him that with the hood up, the valets wouldn’t be able to see the demand in his eyes, but they quickly opened the glistening double doors without question anyway as if he’d lived there his entire life, and bowed to his well-dressed persona.    
  
At their unquestioning deference, Ben’s stomach turned, his feet skidding haltingly to a stop.  
  
_Faceless gunrunners in white plated armor bowing their heads to Kylo Ren. His mother’s political sycophants sparing a low bow to an awkward, gangly-limbed adolescent boy already feared for his unstable Force powers, because the alternative of looking at him in the face made them uneasy._  
  
Painful memories of forsaken lives he hadn’t wanted.  
  
His pause gave Sella the time she needed to catch up to and speed pass him, audibly breathing hard and looking graver than usual.  
  
That wrenched him forward, and Ben swallowed hard, wordlessly following her through the pure opulence of a vast atrium dripping with gold and crystals, past the hall of public residence lifts to a bronze-paneled, private elevator.

When they entered, she glanced back at him circumspectly, then tilted her hand to hide the code she typed into it.  
  
It was when the doors closed and he was well and truly trapped inside it that the sick realization slammed into him:

To get to his grandmother, he was going to have to go through his parents, with whom he had not spoken civilly in almost two decades. Who had left him, over and over, had chosen literally everything else in their lives over their only son, until his mother herself had cemented her final series of betrayals of him to her career and the Alliance.   
  
Even though it'd been eleven years ago, Ben remembered perfectly the sudden hardness that flashed into Leia's eyes as he stood frozen in shock and horror before her, Kylo Ren’s mask wrenched from his face, the moment before she’d fired her Force Suppressant capture gun straight at his chest.

It had been only by the grace of his draconian training that it hadn't struck him down.  
  
The tie around his neck suddenly felt like a noose choking all access to air; he simultaneously wanted to rip it off and/or vomit, and instantly regretted consuming the rich cream and sugared drink on the plane.  
  
“Yes. In the elevator.”  
  
He flinched and looked at Sella sharply. She was holding her phone to her ear, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that one of two, or possibly three specific people was on the other end — damn it to hell, of _course_ his Uncle Luke would be here, too.  
  
“I don’t know,” she said as if Ben wasn’t standing there at all, her words clipped. “Hard to tell.”  
  
In that moment, in his simmering hatred of all of them and the not insignificant barrier they presented, a swift, welcome rush of clarity lifted the panicked fog flooding his mind.

There was only one thing mattered right now, and it wasn’t his parents or his uncle or anything that had to do with them. _They didn't matter,_ and, truth be told, neither did he.  
  
“Is she alive?” he interrupted harshly, suddenly not giving a single _kriff_ about which of them was on the line.  
  
For a moment, neither Sella nor the phone gave any indication of a response. Then, there was the low vibration of speaking, and she looked toward him.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Sheer relief, raw and overwhelming, swept over him.  
  
The elevator stopped moving and the door slid open. Before Sella could so much as step forward, Ben shoved aside his aversion to this place and who he would find here, and barreled into the soaring, all-white vestibule. Shrugging off the overcoat, he dumped it on the nearest chair, then, on second thought, lifted it to carefully cover the box of letters he'd left beside it.

To his relief, the welcome atrium was empty, and without pause, he continuing moving forward with confidence with his faded memory of the suite’s schematics.  
  
The first (102th) floor of D’Qar Sky’s penthouse was double-storied and immense, with all white decor, from the premier selections of furniture to the marble floors stretching forward to floor-to-ceiling windows that spanned the full length of the apartments, opening to an immense, wrap-around patio that overlooked the spiraling architectural masterpieces that were the Alliance of Free Republic’s sprawling government complex at the heart of the city.

Ben guessed it likeliest that Padmé was staying in the largest and more private of the guest quarters, out of the way of general social and hosting activities on the penthouse’s third floor.

Another sharp turn through a wide pale archway, and he was in the sprawling transparisteel-lined living room complete with a grand white marble fireplace and dangling blue-and-white crystal chandelier; he cut through it to the wide, open-air staircase without a moment’s hesitation to admire its splendor.  
  
He only made it half a flight up before his next obstacle appeared.  
  
Uncle Luke was descending the stairs above him, still in those hated Jedi Academy robes that made him look laughably like a monk — moreso now, even, than he had when Ben had last seen him fifteen years ago, with unkempt grey hair and a grizzly beard. His uncle's face was hard, and he held out a hand as if trying to slow him down.

“Ben—“  
  
“Get out of my way,” Ben snapped without slowing his pace.  
  
“Ben, she’s very fragile; you can’t just go in there like this—“  
  
Luke stopped speaking as Ben ignored him and bounded past; he briefly noted with a sort of savage satisfaction that age had not treated Leia’s brother kindly —  
  
With disconcerting abruptness, Ben’s legs locked into place on the third step above Luke, invisible hands rendering them paralyzed.    
  
It took a moment for Ben to accept, more than realize, that what was happening was happening. When he did, the unbridled rage that exploded through his body made every rush of anger he’d felt that day pale in comparison.  
  
He twisted back around at his torso, his wrathful gaze shooting downward toward his “Force-celibate” uncle — who’d apparently hardly needed to lift a finger to cast his will through the Force.  
  
“You _liar,”_ he snarled, voice shaking with fury. “ _‘Resist it, Ben— Never use the Force; it’s safer, Ben.’_ Safer for who? You? I feared and suppressed it for years because of _what you said_ when it could have helped protect me, and now you’re using it on me with the skill of someone who obviously _never gave it up himself?”_  
  
Luke gazed at him with curious mixture of regret, resolve and fear. It was just the two of them now; Sella had clearly made herself scarce. “We both know you were different, Ben.”  
  
He ignored painful throb of the unwantedness that wrenched in his chest at the verbally articulated premise that had dictated his entire childhood. “Was I?" he shot back, the retort raw and painful in his throat, had been waiting over ten years for its moment to see day's light. "I think I wanted the same things that you and probably everyone else wanted when they were that age! It was all of you who always pushed me away--"  
  
“Let him go, Luke.”  
  
His mother’s voice somewhere from the staircase directly above him was unmistakable.

Ben felt like his entire body had been set alight; like he might implode from the sheer volume of fierce emotions warring and screaming through his veins like a firestorm. He wasn't ready to face her yet, and didn't turn as his uncle flung his hand toward Ben, addressing his sister as if Ben was simply a non-sentient piece of ornamental furniture sitting between them.

“Leia, look at him — he’s unstable! That’s the last thing Mother needs right now!”  
  
“I’m _not—“_ Ben bit the inside of his lip so hard he tasted the bitter tang of blood and forced himself to stop mid-sentence, briefly squeezing shut glistening eyes that had started to sting.  
  
They always believed the worst in him.  
  
Nothing he’d said, nothing he did, was going to change that now.  
  
The silence stretched out. Ben clenched his jaw so tightly it ached, his heartbeat thundering so quickly in his chest it made him light-headed and he wondered if there was a possibility he might die from it.

He hated his powerlessness over the only thing left that mattered to him, hated that the gatekeepers of his immediate fate were two of the three people who had hurt and betrayed him the most.

Above all, he hated that, despite this, he wouldn’t be above begging, either.  
  
“Ben," Leia said, and his stomach lurched at her direct address, "she doesn’t have much longer. For her sake, you have to be calm—“  
  
At last, Ben twisted forward to face her, ignoring the sheer physiological response simply seeing his mother triggered in him.  
  
“Would all of you stop acting as if I don’t know that? I _know!”_ he exploded in a hiss, tears of panic and frustration and anger burning at his eyes. “My god, _please_ , just let me see her!”  
  
His mother stared at him for several seconds. Her hair may have been grayer, her face a bit more lined and tired, but in Ben’s thirty years on the planet, her piercing brown gaze had never changed.    
  
Then, she said, “Luke.”  
  
A few more, agonizing seconds passed, and then the Force grip on his legs relaxed.  
  
Without looking at either of them again, Ben sprinted up the final few stairs to the second floor and past his mother. Another flight of stairs and he was at the third floor, to a marble-walled hallway with a somewhat clinical, pale grey floor and furniture that led to a wide set of partially-open double doors.

And suddenly, he wasn't alone.  
  
Swiftly, he skidded to a stop, the slick undersides of his shoes slipping on the floor and dark hair slapping down over his forehead and into his eyes as he desperately tried to halt his considerable momentum.  
  
A number of Alliance and Old Republic elite were quietly milling around outside the rooms. Some faces Ben recognized instantly — first- and second-generation offspring of Padmé’s handmaidens while she’d served as Queen of Naboo, the regal features of Jamillia, the Queen who’d succeeded Padmé, and a few elderly Senators from Padmé’s subsequent time in government. The few others, he didn’t know, though his father, thankfully, was not among them.

Strangely, some light refreshments and tea service had even been set out on a table. It made sense, he acknowledged reluctantly, that someone so widely known and loved as Padmé Amidala would have an audience larger than her immediate family upon her death.

It still didn't make it okay that they were there.

The atmosphere was somber and muted as if they were already at a wake, and he was horrified that many of them were in fact dressed in mourning black, as if Padmé had already died when she _hadn’t._

His heart spluttered to a stop, then sped up rapidly again at the unconsidered possibility.

Had she? Had his mother simply lied to him yet again?  
  
At his none-too-subtle arrival at the corridor’s end, every person in it went dead silent, staring at him, motionless. The abrupt sound of a teacup clattering loudly against a saucer echoed down the hall.  
  
Setting his jaw, Ben straightened his back, gulping in a small breath against the grieving turbulence roiling inside him. Then, with all his remaining energy, he forced the mask of Kylo Ren to his face once last time.  
  
His expression was as cold as he felt about their presence as he strode toward his grandmother’s rooms with an outward confidence he didn’t feel. They wordlessly scattered out of his way, these once-powerful people of the Alliance, pale-faced and wide-eyed, as if he was a ticking bomb that could go off at any moment — even handmaiden Eirtaé’s eldest son Jaenu, who’d been one of the few people who’d seemed to like Ben when they’d visited Varykino at the same time. Their horrified, skittery gazes clung to his face, his scars, his every movement.

Even now, in his family’s home during what should have been an intensely private experience, he was in a public theater.

So Ben allowed himself only a split second to grip the door with a white-knuckled hand and take a deep breath, drawing all emotion flowing through him that did not belong to this moment down, down, down to that small, soft part of himself where there lived only the memory of his grandmother’s gentle singing voice and a radiant stranger’s beautiful, comforting light.  
  
The second passed.  
  
With an impeccably-clothed arm that didn’t quite seem to belong to him, Ben forced himself to pull the door open, and stepped inside.  
  
In the rising darkness, his grandmother’s rooms were illuminated by the glow of all of Hosnia in the windows beyond. Low, soft lights ran along the bottom perimeter of the rooms that thankfully were nothing like the harsh white fluorescence of the Central Detention Center. Still, the quarters were as starkly modern and minimalist as the rest of the penthouse, the environment a far cry from the warm, open-air, flower-laden halls of both Varykino and her Theed apartment that Padmé had loved so much.  
  
Unlike the rest of the penthouse, a beautiful but lone violet orchid was placed in the center of the room’s sitting table, and a few, flat-leaved green shrubs that were potted along the windows — at Padmé’s insistence, he was sure.

Ben’s heart wrenched with an empathy born of both love and deep understanding. How difficult must it have been for her to be anchored here in her final years, separated from the places and things she’d loved the most?  
  
He steadied himself and shifted his gaze to the left toward the rooms' king-sized bed.  
  
Atop crisp white sheets was a scarlet blanket he recognized from her Theed apartments — the only splash of true color he'd seen in the entire penthouse. The bed itself was far too large for his grandmother's petite frame, and she was laying nearer the right side of it, eyes closed.  
  
Even on death’s door, Padmé Amidala was still beautiful; she would always be beautiful, a wave of salt-and-pepper curls tumbling around a face so much thinner than Ben last remembered it being. But where, in Ben’s memory, lived such vivacity and vibrance, there was now a sunken, exhausted fragility he would have never identified with her, almost couldn’t identify with her now.

Her body was so still she he would have feared she was already gone were it not for the middle-aged woman clothed in the pale blue robes of the Royal Academy of Physicians bustling around her bed with a monitor and a datapad in hand.  
  
Only one other person with in the room, an elderly white-haired woman sitting beside her that Ben recognized instantly. Physically, the woman could have been Padmé’s twin, but last Ben had known, Sabé was still living with her family in Yavin, halfway around the planet. She looked even more rickety than his grandmother had the last time Ben had seen Padmé, and he was surprised Sabé had been able to make the arduously long journey at all.

It only drove in the blow, sharp and deep, that his grandmother was truly near the end.

 _Not yet,_ please, _not yet,_ he thought in anguish. It seemed like a cruel cosmic joke: that the person for whom he'd gladly sacrificed his freedom to keep alive and safe would be called home to death's arms the moment he was released.  
  
At his entrance, the physician stopped walking abruptly and regarded him warily, and Padmé’s closest, oldest friend turned to murmur something in his grandmother’s ear.  
  
After a moment, Padmé’s eyes opened. Slowly, she shifted her head toward the door where Ben stood.  
  
In the span of a single second, the entirety of her frail face alighted with pure joy.  
  
An answering, immediate wave of piercing grief and relief struck Ben dumb.

Unshed tears flooded his sinuses and his eyes. He tried to smile back at her but found he couldn’t. He wanted to tell — beg — the other women in the room to leave, to give them some -- _any_ \-- privacy, but found his voice had stopped working, too.  
  
He didn’t even realize that Sabé had moved until she was standing right beside him, one thin hand on her cane and the other clutching at the physician’s arm. For a moment, she simply gave him a long, hard look, this woman who had once often joined Padmé to play with him as if he was one her own grandchildren.

Ben stiffened slightly, bracing himself for the worst.  
  
Then, she unexpectedly placed her hand on his arm. Ben flinched at the contact, but for several seconds, Sabé simply rested it there.

After a moment, his eyes widened in realization and shock.  
  
This was — this was meant to _comfort_ him.  
  
He shuddered again as gratitude unfamiliar in its intensity and even greater grief surged through him. With a soft gasp, his struggling emotions spilled over with a trembling chin and slipping tears. He swiftly turned his head away from the two women in a feeble, desperate attempt to hide the final collapse of his detached coldness from Sabé's steady gaze.  
  
To his relief and regret, the light pressure on his arm vanished, and the doors clicked quietly behind them as they left.

Ben blinked rapidly, briefly staring up at the swirl-etched ceiling as he swallowed back the lump in his throat. Then, with a deep breath, he rushed to Padmé’s side, sinking to his knees beside the bed. “Grandmother, I'm here,” he whispered, gently taking her trembling hand.   
  
His voice was a hoarse, pained rasp.  
  
Slowly, her fingers curled around his, love and a faint smile still on her lips.  
  
“Ben,” she breathed, relief palpable in her quiet voice. “My brave… beautiful boy.”  
  
Like a deep exhale, the vise that had been crushing his heart and compressing his chest at last loosened.  
  
So often, he hadn’t known what Padmé saw in him, how someone as good and giving as she was could love someone like him, even if he was her grandson. (His parents and uncle had proved that traditional familial bonds meant nothing.) A part of him still didn’t know. But he understood very clearly that his grandmother had always loved him, unabashedly and without fail, and in return Ben loved and adored her for it, loyally, fiercely, and would until the day he died.  
  
“Grandmother, can I do anything for you? Get you anything?” he asked gently, trying to keep any trace of worry from his voice. “Are you in pain? Are you uncomfortable?”  
  
“Not… now…” For a moment, her eyes closed. “And never… when you’re here.”  
  
Wretchedness wracked through him. “I’m sorry it took me so long," he croaked.  
  
She looked at him again, eyes shining in the Hosnian twilight. “It’s… alright, lamb. I’ve… waited.”  
  
At that, Ben’s tears streamed harder, blurring his view of her, and it took all his strength not to release her hand to bury his face in his own and weep. Over the years, there had been so many ways he imagined this would go, so many things he’d wanted to say to her, share with her, _explain_ to her when the day came that his letters to her weren’t first read by prison guards and their in-person visits weren’t separated by a glass wall, supervised and recorded.  
  
But now, all he could do was repeat, “I’m so sorry… for everything I’ve done that’s kept me away from you. I _never_ wanted that, and... maybe if there’d been some way to avoid… going the way I did…”  
  
Tears glossed Padmé’s eyes. They were as deeply brown as Ben’s, but possessed a wonderfully open, welcoming and loving warmth that he'd become so afraid to show and wasn't entirely sure he'd ever had to begin with.  
  
“Oh, lamb,” she breathed, “it is I who am sorry for how terribly this family has failed you.”  
  
For a moment, Ben couldn’t breathe.

Such simple words of apology, yet they were ones that he'd never before received from anyone in his family -- from only one other person at all.

Another powerful swell of emotion loosed inside him, and he desperately sucked in a gulp of air, lifting a fist to his mouth to choke back a sob. He shook his head fiercely, tears dripping down his chin. “You never failed me, Grandmother. Not once."

He cradled her shaking hand like it was the most precious thing in the world — it was — and recalled how she had comforted him while he was bedridden and recovering from the cruelty of the Jedi Academy incident so many years ago. Tentatively, he reached out, gently stroking his fingers once, lovingly, down the darkened age spots scattered across her cheek. He forced a smile to his face, wavering and weak and foreign as it was. “You’ve always meant _everything_ to me.”  
  
The smile she gave him in return was enough to melt through the rest of the protective sheaths he’d raised around his heart. “Ben. My kind… gentle lamb.”  
  
His grandmother was the only one who could call him that name and make it sound right, the only one on earth who would ever call him a kind, gentle lamb and mean it, and Ben tried to memorize the sound of it, the memory of this moment, knowing with a forlorn ache that it could be the last time he heard it.  
  
She gestured him closer, and he leaned forward obligingly.  
  
“You know… what I did with Varykino, in my last years there,” she whispered. Her voice was fainter still, but warm, and it drew him from his grief.  
  
Ben nodded. “An inn. For Takodana Way travelers — not politicians and plutocrats.”

"...unless they're... also Takodana Way travelers..." 

"That would be highly unlikely," he said dryly before he could help himself.

Padmé's lips briefly pulled upward at this assessment. "...true..."

"I understand," he said after a moment. "Your inn was non-discriminatory."  
  
He recalled Padmé’s letters from that time, filled with animated stories of those who'd stopped there while passing by the Varykino peninsula along the legendary, centuries-old multi-country pathway that wove through famously scenic landscapes and villages from the Kamino Ocean clear to the sacred island of Ahch-To. Luke and Leia had not been pleased with this development, has grandmother had told him, and given his experiences with the pervasive criminal underbelly of the Alliance of Free Republics, Ben for once couldn't say he disagreed with them.

But Padmé had seemed happier by this idea than she had in years, so he'd been cautiously supportive of the idea -- given she _take precautions,_ which he'd painstakingly outlined in one of his letters, and had no idea if she'd actually followed through on any of them.

It was around then that her letters’ handwriting had also unexpectedly changed from his grandmother’s elegant though increasingly shaky script to something blocky and careful, with occasional notes and turns of phrase that definitively did not belong to Padmé.  
  
A new transcriber, and Ben had been significantly concerned about how little he knew of this unknown woman from _the western reaches_ , of all the miserable hellholes of the world, one who’d latched on too quickly and closely to his grandmother, despite Padmé’s repeated reassurances through their secret written code that she could be trusted. But the stories his grandmother and she had shared together had often been so entertaining that Ben had reluctantly admitted he enjoyed reading them.  
  
In the years after the handwriting had changed yet again, after Ben had learned the startling truth about that woman and predictably managed to ruin everything, he had kept those letters in a separate pile from the others.  
  
“Yes.” Padmé beamed again at his swift response. “For _anyone_ … who needs rest on the long journey.” Her hand gripped his tighter, strengthening with sudden urgency. “Ben. I’d like it… to carry on as such. Long after I am gone.”  
  
He nodded again, listening closely. “Of course, Grandmother. I’ll tell Lei—“ his throat closed, and only for Padmé’s sake did he amend it to, “Mother.”  
  
Padmé shook her head, the motion so slight it was barely noticeable. “Not… Leia. I am giving Varykino... to _you.”_  
  
Ben was so stunned that for either several seconds or several minutes, he couldn’t find the words to respond.

Varykino had been such a special, beloved place to his grandmother, a central part of the Naberrie family’s centuries-old history and Naboo's proud aristocratic legacy as well. To skip over bestowing it to one of her two golden children and instead leave it to someone who'd publicly brought the Amidala-Organa-Solo name only scandal and shame, someone widely reviled and distrusted whose only legacy consisted of blood and violence and destruction and fear...

"Are you... sure?" he finally managed to choke out.  
  
His grandmother’s lips turned upward. “Our happiest memories were… there, lamb, were they not?”  
  
Ben briefly released her hand to hastily scrape his palm over his soaked, swollen face, blinking back another round of hot tears. “Yes,” he whispered, his voice so faint he suddenly worried she hadn't heard it. The only taste of happiness he’d known.  
  
“Please… Ben…” Padmé's eyes glazed with the shine of shared tears. “Honor me by… doing this?”  
  
He stared, transfixed, at the love and hope in her expression, such _achingly palpable_ love it still almost seemed impossible, his response immediate on his lips. Of course -- _of course_ he would do anything to honor her final wishes.

 _If they let you,_ whispered a cold, cruel voice in the shadows of his mind that sounded too much like Snoke. _Inheritance or not, you know they'll find a way to lock you back up like the rabid cur they think you are the moment she's dead._

Harsh reality and the unspeakable anguish of disappointing his grandmother on her deathbed viciously swept upon the weakness of Ben's grieving mind like a ravenous night beast.

He didn’t know if managing an inn out of an estate he owned and inherited would count as gainful employment, didn’t know if the Alliance or Nabooian governments would even allow him to keep Varykino with his notorious criminal history. Even if they did -- if, by some impossible stroke of fate, he wasn't back in his CDC cell within the month -- Ben certainly didn’t think there was anyone in the world who would stop there, exhausted travelers or not, if they knew he was the one in charge of it.  
  
He didn’t want to lie to her... but he desperately didn’t want to let her down, either. Not now.  
  
Ben reclaimed her hand, squeezing it gently. “I’ll find a way,” he vowed hoarsely. As soon as the unlikely promise left his mouth, his stomach twisted in fear, and he prayed to the Force and the Maker that it wasn't an impossible oath.  
  
This seemed to be enough for Padmé, and her slight shoulders relaxed, though her lips briefly pressed together in the rare but potent Amidala frown. _“Leia…_ Make sure they give every… last credit… I left for Varykino…”  
  
Anger swelled inside at the possibility -- that his mother would be behind anything so vile. “I will,” he swore, this promise easier than the last. He tried not to think about how swiftly Padmé's faint voice was fading; how much this conversation appeared to be tiring her.  
  
“Grandmother, would you like to rest for a moment?” he suggested gently despite the hard bite of worry clouding his mind. “I love talking to you, you know that, but we can continue this later—”  
  
_“No,”_ she said with sudden forcefulness.

Her voice left no room for disagreement, and sent a spear of dread through his chest.  
  
As if the abrupt outburst had never occurred, Padmé continued in a murmur, her voice again faint and struggling, “You will need… help.” Her trembling fingers shifted feebly, and Ben swiftly followed their motion to see she was gesturing toward her bedside table. “The drawer… the book… last… page…”  
  
Quickly, he followed her directions and pulled a small, folded piece of paper from what appeared to be a leather journal. “I see it.” It was the only loose item inside it.  
  
When he tried to slip the scrap into Padmé's hand, she instead weakly closed his fingers around it. “This person… ran Varykino with me… at the very end. She loves it… as you do. I trust her… with it… you.”  
  
Ben’s heart at once flipped and sank.

He didn’t need to look at the paper to know exactly who his grandmother was talking about.  
  
Anguish and unspeakable regret wrenched at his chest. His eyes shut briefly, his breath escaping his lungs in a long, heavy sigh. _“Grandmother…”_

It was out before he could stop himself, like a young boy caught with a secret he knew he shouldn’t have kept. “She’d never do it,” he whispered, ashamed. “Not with me.”  
  
For so many reasons, but especially not after…

He bowed his head rather than see the disappointment in Padmé’s eyes that such an arrangement could never be. The shame and pain of it, of their single momentous encounter and how he’d handled it -- had no _choice_ but to handle it-- had lingered in his mind for three years.

He sometimes wondered if she ever thought about it even a fraction of the times he did. He doubted she ever thought about it at all... except, possibly, to hate the very mention of him, which was no more than he deserved.  
  
To his surprise, Padmé’s thin, trembling hand now lay itself as a weight of reassurance on his. “Sweet… strong Ben. You’ve always thought… too little of yourself. As my life… ends… yours… only begins. Rebuild your faith… in yourself. You have so much… to offer the world…”  
  
Ben pressed his lips together, his burning vision wavering and his chin trembling violently once more. At the unending kindness and generosity of his grandmother's conviction in him, he felt wretched and unworthy and _so undeserving_ \-- didn’t know how to do what she wanted him to, didn’t think the world was going to let him offer it anything except surrendering himself to a lifetime confined in a small, padlocked room.

But he forced himself to look down at her and nod once, squeezing her hand back gently.  
  
“I’ll try,” he rasped.  
  
It was the best he could promise, but Padmé must have sensed the sincerity behind it, because her eyes again fell shut.  
  
In the silence that followed, her breaths so slow and faint that her chest almost didn’t appear to be moving at all, Ben’s gaze traced wildly over her aged face, the smooth gray curls of her hair, the smile lines around her mouth and eyes. He buried all nightmarish flashes of her in Snoke’s clutches and allowed to stream through his mind only memories of the happiest days of his childhood that he spent with her. He could still hear the sound of her ringing and his boyish laughter mingling together, still feel the safety of her protective, comforting hug.  
  
“I’ll miss you so much,” he choked out before he could think better of it.  
  
For one beautiful moment of clarity, his grandmother’s eyes snapped open, glistening with cognizance and love. She smiled.  
  
Through tears again flowing openly down his face, Ben immediately smiled back.  
  
_Please don’t leave me,_ he begged silently. _Please don’t leave…_  
  
As if she'd somehow heard his thoughts, Padmé’s trembling hand lifted weakly, brushing the edge of his upturned lip. “I’m… _here,_ lamb… Always...”  
  
Her eyes closed tiredly.  
  
Her arm slumped.  
  
She breathed out deeply, and didn’t inhale again.  
  
Ben didn’t need his connection to the Force to know that his grandmother was gone.  
  
_“No,”_ he croaked, eyes swiftly filling with so much emotion that her small form became only a gray blur. There was still so much he still wanted to say, so much to tell her and hear from her voice as well, and there hadn't been enough _time_ \-- _never_ enough time...

 _Thank you for writing me when no one else did... Thank you for visiting me when no one else would... I've kept all your letters... I've read them over and over... I'm so grateful to you for everything you are and have ever been, to me and to everyone who's met you..._ _  
_

_Grandmother, I love you, I_ love _you; come back,_ please _come back…_  
  
He rocketed backward in shock when Leia suddenly flung herself on her knees and across the bed beside him and grasped Padmé’s still hand. “No!” she wailed. _“Mother!”_  
  
Her shoulder shoved against his, her focus entirely on Padmé's too-still face. At her nearness, Ben recoiled in panic, his tears freezing on his face. He leapt to his feet, staggering backward from the bed as Leia collapsed over her mother’s body, sobbing, and nearly collided with a free-standing lamp. He spun to catch it a moment before it crashed to the floor, just as the door flung open and others streamed in — the physician, Senator Jenard, Sabé, Uncle Luke.  
  
The latter shot him a suspicious, accusing glare before escorting forward Sabé, who was clutching his uncle's arm. Their eyes were filled with shared grief.  
  
Ben had no place here.  
  
He blindly fled the room, legs unsteady and weak, face hot and swollen and sticky with tears and brain not working fully enough to steel himself against the sorrowful yet unkind stares of all those now crowded around the doors outside.

With a silent, curled snarl of his lip, he shoved past them, and nearly collided with something — someone — again.

It was his father.  
  
Both Han and Ben froze, regarding the other warily. Han's face was as lined as Luke's, hair as gray as his mother's and face even more world-weary than it had been the last time Ben had seen him, when he’d thundered out on Ben during visitation hours six months into his sentence and had never come back again.  
  
After a moment, Han’s jaw worked in a motion that Ben was thunderstruck to recognize as a habit of his own, and he knew his father was gearing up to speak.

He'd rather burn alive again than face that conversation right now. 

Instantly, he spun on his heel and strode down the corridor as quickly as his long legs could take him without looking as though he were running.  
  
“Ben. _Ben!”_  
  
He cringed, his father’s volume at the most inappropriate times so typical and so detestable. He wanted to scream at him to shut up, to honor the silence in the wake of his grandmother’s passing, but knew that would only make it worse, and the very last thing he wanted right now was to cause a scene.

So he roamed the penthouse mindlessly, sightlessly, turning corners and descending stairs without analysis or aim. At some point, tears had again begun silently flowing from his eyes, his mind pulsing with disjointed thoughts and emotions he didn’t know how to begin to process, and he was unspeakably grateful that everyone else seemed to be gathered upstairs. 

Distantly, he marveled at this ability to freely walk wherever he wanted, and the small part of him that wondered if this entire bizarre and horrific day might have simply been another nightmare was actively waiting for the swift jolt of electricity from his Suppression collar or a CDC guard's Z6 shock baton to punish him for this unsanctioned privilege.  
  
He eventually found himself in another, smaller guest bedroom, this one white with a few surprising black accents, three solid walls, and only a single line of windows looking out across the Hosnian skyline.

Ben recognized this room.  
  
As a child and then a teenager, he’d slept here -- those six brief instances he’d visited this place more than a decade ago.  
  
Cautiously, hesitantly, Ben stepped inside.  
  
Despite the impeccable decor, the room felt as unwelcoming and sterile as the rest of the penthouse — true to its designation, a house but not a home, as most of his parents’ ultra modern, luxury residences had been.

He wondered if they’d let him sleep here tonight, or if that opportunity had been signed off along with their legal renouncement of him, if he’d instead be immediately forced out on the streets now that his grandmother was gone.

His grandmother was _gone._  
  
With a feral bellow of agony that seemed to emanate from the rawest, most shadowed depths of his soul, Ben's arm flung out blindly, ripping several drawers from the black dresser beside the door and hurling them and their contents across the room.

It seared his skin like five chest-sized brands at once, then -- a profound, unfathomable grief for a loss of such depth he couldn’t yet fully articulate it, and blistering loneliness that accompanied the irrefutable truth that he was now well and truly alone in a world that would have unequivocally preferred to have seen him die on that upstairs bed in place of his grandmother.  
  
Despite his promises to Padmé, Ben almost wished he had, too.

With another howl of sorrow, he violently overturned the entire dresser itself; it smashed into the side of the bed with a sickening crack, the few trinkets that had been on top of it shattering on the floor.  
  
Without heeding the broken glass and destruction he’d caused yet again around him, Ben crumpled down over his knees, pulled wildly at his hair, and wept, the folded slip of paper Padmé had given him still clenched, unopened, in his fist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goodness, this was quite an emotional chapter! A good amount of backstory and some world-building, too. I PROMISE they all won't be so heavy and angst filled! Poor Ben needs some love and friendship (beyond his grandma's, of course). Padme's "Lullaby" is courtesy of Josh Groban. It's a beautiful song. 
> 
> I know we've only looked at Ben thus far, but we will soon get to Rey's POV, and they'll have their first interaction next chapter. 
> 
> I've based the idea of the Takodana Way after the Camino Santiago de Compostela, an awesomely cool thirty-day walk across France and Spain! I'd encourage you to check it out if you haven't heard of it.
> 
> If you're reading and enjoying this, please let me know what you think; your comments mean so much and are truly the most helpful and affirming source of encouragement!


	3. The Snub

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …so, after the rain comes the rainbow, right? Here's Rey’s POV to shake things up; we're finally getting closer to the heart of what originally went down between our favorite couple. This chapter was SO very long (24,000 words and counting!) that for your sanity and mine, I’ve broken it up into two. 
> 
> Also, if you haven’t heard the song “Soldiers of Love (THE LAUNCH)” by Poesy, it is very Reylo-ish. It’s a great song. Go listen to it. After you finish the chapter, of course! ;)

 __

_**Three and a half years ago** _

  
__  
  
_Dear Grandmother,_  
  
_I have always admired your kindness, openness and trust in the best of others — they are all gifts I do not share. It has been a great relief to me that in your lifetime, they have only brought you good fortune. That said, I myself am not comfortable with the idea of sharing our personal correspondence with yet another third party (the others being however many hands this passes at the Central Detention Center). Surely Maz is still there and available to transcribe your letters instead of this “R” person?_  
  
_If she for some reason isn’t — if it must be this complete stranger— please, I beg you, do plenty of due diligence — thorough background checks, work and criminal history reports, several references at a minimum. I unfortunately am all too familiar with the wasteland that comprises the Western Reaches; the populations are lawless, uneducated, and by and large consist of good-for-nothing thieves, leeches, delinquents and, yes -- killers. They are not friends to the Amidala/Solo families, Grandmother. I wouldn't for a moment be inclined to trust anyone with origins there, especially one who has so conveniently managed to show up on your doorstep thousands of miles away in the Lake Country. I urge you to be extremely cautious._  
  
_I sincerely hope you don’t find this letter patronizing or implying of a lack of trust in your judgement. I only want to keep you safe, and since I unfortunately cannot be there to see what you see and know what you know, sharing my concerns via writing is all I can do._  
  
_I wish I could be there with you now, at this time of year. There isn’t a moment I don’t wish I could be there. _  
  
_In your next letter, please let me know what you find/decide. I don’t care if “R” learns of my low opinion of her. In fact, I’d rather she does._  
  
_With love (and concern),_  
  
_Ben_  
  
Rey stared in disbelief at the perfectly looping -- and perfectly contemptible -- calligraphic words she had just finished reading aloud to Padmé. The two women were in sitting in beautifully carved mahogany armchairs in Padmé's spheric, open-air Varykino study, the former Queen of Naboo gazing past white columns to the lake beyond, her upturned, tranquil almond-shaped eyes and pressed lips a perfect picture of contemplative study. Rey, meanwhile, was open-mouthed, face flushed in equal parts mortification and fury, a large pit of embarrassment and dread sitting like a rock in her stomach.

She was still getting used to being here, beside this kind and distinguished woman in this beautiful place with more food than seemed possible and fine things she’d never in her life believed she might have the opportunity to see and smell and touch and taste. After only recently parting ways with her first and only best friend when Rey had decided to fully throw her heart and soul into joining Padmé Amidala’s staff at Varykino, she was finally beginning to feel as though maybe, just maybe, she was becoming a part of the small family of residents and caretakers here.  
  
Which made every slanderous word Padmé’s grandson had written about her feel even more like a slap in the face.  
  
Rey had never been more certain of anything in her life than this:  
  
Ben Organa Solo was an elitist, self-righteous, infuriating _prig._  
  
True, she hadn’t felt that way only three weeks ago. She’d gladly agreed to assist Padmé with her writing needs, as — to Rey’s worry — the trembling in the older woman’s hands had continued to worsen. If anything, Rey had felt honored and more than a little surprised that a Jakku nobody with quite frankly terrible handwriting who Padmé had only known for a little over six months had been selected for this responsibility.  
   
That wasn’t to say that Rey, ever so curious to understand how and why things worked, hadn’t leapt on the opportunity to learn even more about Padmé’s enigma of a grandson.

As a child, she’d heard stories of Darth Vader and then, as she aged, Kylo Ren — mostly in the form of fables woven by unkind foster families about monsters who’d come and snatch bad children away in the night if they didn’t do more chores, never to be seen again.  
  
But Rey _felt_ Padmé’s openness and honesty when she spoke with deep love of her only grandchild— a shy, thoughtful, gentle boy, one who loved reading and caring for stray animals and had created the beautiful paintings in swirling calligraphic script that Padmé had framed and were hanging from the walls of her study. And she was far more inclined to believe a reminiscing grandmother than the far-fetched gossip whispered by any passing traveler, and even Finn, who had realized Padmé’s connection to the widely-feared villain Kylo Ren.

Most intriguing to Rey, though she’d never dare admit it, was Ben’s infamous Force sensitivity — public knowledge, she’d learned, since he'd been a child. Rey, on the other hand, had been _extraordinarily careful_ to hide her own powers once she’d realized what they were. She’d been so cautious, and Force uses today so rare, that she’d never actually met anyone with whom she could talk about it; in Jakku, to be discovered as a Force-sensitive meant the potential of being branded a witch, of being sold to a criminal cartel to do their nefarious bidding, of being hunted down and Suppressed by bounty hunters or the Alliance, of… well, the list went on.  
  
So she'd asked Padmé question after genuine question about her grandson, mixing those that involved the Force with plenty of others that didn't. At first, Padmé had seemed surprised, but after long consideration, had slowly begun sharing quite a bit with her — _probably much more than Ben would have **ever** liked,_ Rey swiftly understood now, thinking of how many times Padmé had led with, _"Well, Ben wouldn’t want most people to know this, so I won’t say very much, but…”_  
  
Even so — even if Rey now understood that Ben Solo, despite his seemingly privileged birth, had experienced a surprisingly difficult life — it didn’t for one _second_ mean he had to be a straight up bantha's behind to whoever crossed his path who wasn’t Padmé. Rey, too, had had a hard life in a harsh world, and yet she still managed to be _kind_ to people, to give others the benefit of the doubt whenever she could. But Ben... _Ben..._  
  
Swiftly, she rescanned his scathing review of his imaginary Western Reaches delinquent.  
  
_‘Good-for-nothing thieves… wouldn't for a moment be inclined to trust anyone with origins there… so conveniently showed up at your doorstep,’ oh, I can just **hear** the disparaging sneer in his voice there… ‘In fact, I’d rather she does.’_  
  
By the end of it, her neck — quite frankly, all of her — was hot with anger.  
  
How _dare_ he? How dare this man, who was currently serving ten years in a maximum security prison for _bloody high crimes_ , be presumptuous enough to act as though _she_ was the criminal, with no evidence except his high-bred prejudices to inform that view?! Rey might have even acknowledged that his argument for caution could have been _reasonable_ , given what she knew of his experiences and the worst of the world, had he not deliberately chosen to include that direct dig at her at the very end, like a nerfherder stupidly waving a red flag at a bull.  
  
“Rey, I hope you know I have no intention of subjecting you to what Ben has suggested,” Padmé said then with a sigh, interrupting Rey’s silently spiraling fury. “I should have expected this... This is the first my grandson has heard of you, and he’s always been overly protective of me. I’ll smooth this over in my reply—”  
  
“No,” Rey said heatedly, shaking her head. She fought the urge to leap up and pace the room, the fire of irritation and insult burning through her veins. “No, I — I think he’s right. You should do a background check on me. In fact, do three.” She might have been passed from foster home to foster home in the dregs of Jakku, but she’d taken great pains to keep her record spotless. “Let him know I _insisted.”_    
  
At last, Padmé turned her gaze from the scenery and back to Rey, thin, penciled brows arched in clear surprise.  
  
Rey’s mouth snapped shut. Swiftly, another round of heat flooded her cheeks. _Stars,_ she knew she could have a temper, but had she really just openly ranted in front of the woman who’d given shelter, food, jobs and nothing but kindness to her and Finn? About circumstances involving her grandson?    
  
She squirmed awkwardly, praying this hadn’t broken the immense trust and openness Padmé had shown her. “I-I mean, if background checks aren’t… terribly expensive, of course.”

 _R'iia'a breath; horrific recovery, Rey._  
  
After another beat of silence, Padmé said simply, “Very well. I shall make the necessary arrangements.” As relief surged through Rey, Padmé planted her cane on the floor and stood, turning to rifle around her desk. “I should think one will be more than sufficient,” she added mildly, and Rey couldn't understand why it appeared as though the older woman was trying to hide a smile. “You can inform him yourself of what I've no doubt will be benign results, once they arrive.”  
  
But _that_ seemed like a terrible idea!  
  
“Oh, stars no, I really don’t think I should,” Rey hastily disagreed, though she certainly wanted to _inform_ Ben Organa Solo of a number of other things, if he thought it was acceptable to attack others’ characters without knowing a thing about them, especially after he'd spent his whole life dealing with others doing the same to him. “I think it's clear he’s never going to believe a single word I say.”  
  
Padmé turned to look at Rey again, her warm chestnut eyes bright. “Even Ben, for all his seeming aloofness, wants deeply to know and be known. In time, perhaps he will.”  
  
That seemed about as likely as one of the fat, fluffy shaaks that grazed the Lake Country’s grassy hills suddenly sprouting wings and flying away, but Rey knew that wonderful, warm Padmé loved this frustrating, intolerable man, so she restrained herself from sharing that thought aloud.  
  
_  
  
_**Present Day**_  
  
_  
  
Rey shoved herself from beneath the sleek body of a Chandrila ZY 52 Spyder, her phone buzzing insistently. So few people called her that it could have been only a handful of options, all of whom she’d absolutely want to talk to. Hastily, she grasped a spare rag, wiped the worst of the grease from her hands, and snatched her old-model flip phone from her front pocket, snapping it open on what surely must have been the last ring.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
“You really need to upgrade your phone so you can at least tell it’s me who’s calling, peanut. There’s a new telemarketing scam out right now that records your voice if you say a single _word_ and uses it to render a digital replica for making illegal purchases. I’m studying sales, and even _I_ think that’s slimy. I’m telling you, Rey, better today to be safe than sorry.”  
  
Rey laughed, happiness and relief filling her chest at the voice of her best friend and, for all purposes, soul brother. “I’m fairly certain Padmé must have put this number on a specialized blacklist for royals before she gave it to me; I’ve never gotten a single spam call on it.” Something painful _panged_ in her chest as she thought of the older woman. It settled heavily in her stomach, and felt like grief.  
  
With a soft sigh, she abandoned the short rolling cart she was sitting on and climbed to her feet, phone pressed to her ear against the loud, mechanical sounds and elevated chatter of the immense, buzzing motor shop. “Finn, do you have a second? I know this is your busy time, but…”  
  
“You got it, peanut. I am yours for the next twenty minutes.” He groaned, sounding tired. “I feel like such a sleemo for saying that. Our project management course client moved up their project deadline to next week, not realizing that since this is a _class_  and not a real consulting gig, we’re technically supposed to have until the end of the semester to finish it. I’ve literally been living on calculations and spreadsheets and caffeine for the last 48 hours straight.”  
  
She shook her head in sympathy and headed for the break room, weaving between other mechanics similarly uniformed in black jackets and brown trousers with yellow stripes down the sides. Her own work jacket was tied around her waist, a logo of the original YT-1300f model Millennium Falcon stamped on the front. “Stars, I think I’d rather hike across the entire length of Geonosis again than go through that.”  
  
“I’ll leave that walking to you, then. I’d die happy knowing I might never look upon another desert wasteland for the rest of my functional life.”  
  
Rey burst into laughter, ducking into the downright luxurious employee break rooms. There were only a few people inside the kitchen nursing late-morning coffees, and she gave them a wave before turning into the staff lounge, tucking herself into the farthest leather sofa across the room. “This is precisely why you’re in business school and I’m not.”  
  
“Yeah. That’s true. I miss you, though. I’m sorry we haven’t really been able to see much of each other for the past four years. Maybe when I graduate…”  
  
“You’ll go work in a big, exciting city like Hosnia or Canto Bight like you’ve always wanted to,” she finished brightly for him, pushing down her own sadness at his distance. “Finn, you have to follow your dream. Just like I’m…” She glanced around the gleaming break room, sparkling clean for being an _auto repair center_ and filled with the newest appliances and electronics. Thought of her apartment a few blocks away, small but all her own, filled with plants and flowers that reminded her of… of the nearest thing she’d had to call home. All things said, it wasn't _at all_ a bad place to land. “…I’m following mine, I guess.”  
  
“You really think you’re going to stay there awhile? It’s been over two years, hasn’t it? Isn’t this typically your move-along point?”  
  
Rey blinked in confusion, then vaguely remembered the rationale she’d given him during a conversation about why she’d finally left Varykino. “Oh. I… I haven’t really thought about it. I don’t think I could find a shop like this anywhere farther east that would pay me half as well. And I get along so well with my boss, which I'd hate to lose.”  
  
“Yeah, I guess having a big hairy guy on your side when the going gets tough is a plus, I’ll admit. But it’s just so dead there, Rey. It’s _Coronet._ I bet you could find nearly that amount of pay and a decent guy in charge somewhere else where there’s actually a nightlife and people your age around.”  
  
Recalling the few ‘nights on the town’ Finn had dragged her out on when they were traveling together years earlier and whenever she visited him at the University of Bespin, Rey wasn’t sure she needed more than a very occasional nightlife, and certainly not one that involved lots of clubs and bars.  
  
In truth, Corellia, small and highly industrial, was exactly what she’d needed: someplace quiet, unassuming, and off the radar. When Padmé, knowing Rey’s love of mechanics, had suggested — more like arranged — that she try her hand at her famous son-in-law’s side business after Rey had decided not to accompany her to Hosnia, she hadn’t been able to turn the offer down, and really, she was glad she hadn’t. Though it possessed virtually none of the beautiful landscapes she’d loved so much during her and Finn’s cross-continent adventures, Corellia was famous the world over for its luxury vehicle and sports car production, and the Han Solo Millennium Garage and Speciality Repair Center in the capital was the preeminent high-end vehicle care shop on the continent outside of specific dealers.  
  
In the two years since, Rey had fixed 200,000 credit cars, absolutely stunning works of mechanical art that had been shipped thousands of miles to the Center at the cost of thousands of credits — although, even though she’d briefly lived with a former Queen at her country estate, the idea that anyone would have and spend that much money on anything so superficial as cars and auto care when there were children starving on the streets of the Western Reaches without even a credit to their names was absolutely insane to her.  
  
“I really don’t mind that it isn’t necessarily a young person’s city. It’s given me plenty of time to work on hobbies,” she insisted, ignoring the lonely tug at her chest that did miss having at least _some_ people around when she went home in the evening. “And I do get out to explore the antique yards outside the city with Chewy sometimes. You wouldn’t _believe_ the beautiful first- or second-model custom-build cars that are just sitting here behind piles of old scrap metal, Finn— it’s amazing!”  
  
He sounded like he was holding back a laugh. “Yeah, okay, grandpa, only you would get excited about going on antique scrap metal scavenging excursions with you boss in your free time,” he said warmly. “But alright, fine. As long as you’re enjoying it there. Now, what’s up with the text? Is everything okay?”  
  
“Yes, of course,” Rey answered automatically, then blinked rapidly. “I-I mean… no… no, not really.” She let out a long breath and hesitated, biting her lip. This was the very reason she’d navigated her phone’s mangled keypad three days ago to send Finn a rare text message mid-morning when she knew he’d probably be in class, but now, as always, she was reluctant to be the bearer of bad news.  
  
A few Pydyrian programmers were still hovering around the Keurig machine across the room in the staff kitchen, so she lowered her voice before saying, “Finn, it’s Padmé. She’s…” She swallowed hard, trying to ignore the sudden pain that clenched around her heart. “She died earlier this week.”  
  
Only a single beat of silence passed before Finn said with the same sincere delivery that Rey knew was going to make him the world’s greatest businessperson, “Oh no, Rey, I’m so sorry to hear that. I know how close you and she were.” He groaned. “Crushed choobies, now I feel even worse it took me so long to call you.”  
  
She shook her head swiftly, shoving as much buoyancy into her voice as she could. “No, it’s okay! It’s completely fine. I knew you were busy. It’s just… you’d met her, too. I thought you might want to know.”  
  
“I’m surprised I didn’t already, it must have been all over the news. I just haven’t been able to come up for air at all since Monday.” Rey didn’t know how much she’d needed to hear the sympathy in another human voice until he said, “Peanut, I’m sorry. How are you holding up?”    
  
With a speed that frightened her, she felt tears burn at her eyes and sinuses; she wrinkled her nose in an effort to hold them back. She’d already sobbed for an hour straight three days earlier in her apartment, every single one of her plants and flowers drooping by the end of it as they sensed her sadness and grief through the Force. As soon as she’d noticed, she’d forced herself to quickly process her lingering grief and had hastily given them a special nutrient mix, which thankfully seemed to perk them back up. There was no need to subject any of her coworkers to a disturbance in the bloody Force right now, of all things.    
  
“Okay,” she whispered.  
  
“Is she having a funeral? Are you going to try to go? Or wait— oh no, did it already happen? Rey, I have not slept in two days and I’m so out of the loop right now, I’m probably not asking any of the right questions here.”  
  
Rey choked out a laugh at his confused, rapid-fire inquiry. “Her funeral was… yesterday, actually. In Theed. It was a State event; they shut down businesses and everything. I… thought about going, if I could catch a flight out after work on Wednesday, but the only ones left were so expensive, and I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to get close to her at all with all the dignitaries who’d be there. So I… decided I’d prefer to remember her as she was.” She swallowed hard past the lump in her throat, nodding more in reassurance to herself than anyone else. “I said goodbye to her, in my own way.”  
  
Suddenly, in the background of Finn’s phone, there was a burst of noise and muffled conversation.    
  
“Rey — Rey wait — I am so, so sorry, but I have to go. We’re going into another call with our client right now,” Finn said quickly. _“Man,_ I feel like the world’s worst best friend right now. You free Sunday? Can I call you then? They tell us we’ll be done with all of this by Saturday at midnight. I'm not totally sure I believe them, though.”  
  
She blinked rapidly, nodding, then realized he couldn’t see her and cleared her throat. “Yes. Of course. Sunday’s fine. And don’t worry about it, Finn, seriously; I know the timing isn’t great. Good luck with your call right now.”  
  
“I’m sorry, peanut,” he repeated. “Love you.”  
  
“Love you too,” she said weakly.  
  
Rey hung up her phone, staring down at the scuffed, maroon plastic screen that had a small crack starting down the side of it. Padmé had given it to her three years ago now for Rey’s first ever plane trip, back when flip phones were still considered an upgrade model and texts didn’t include photographs. She could probably afford a new phone now, though she’d never looked into it. Now, with Padmé gone, she knew she’d be holding on to this one for as long as she could.  
  
Deep down, she’d known very well that the older woman who’d been the closest thing to a mother or grandmother that Rey had ever had was going to pass away soon. Han’s regular monthly visits to the Center had ceased a few months earlier, and through his mass of facial hair, she could tell Chewy’s expressions when he talked about the Organa family matriarch were growing increasingly worried. Hardest of all to hear had been Padmé’s voice during their last conversation together five weeks ago; she had sounded so tired and weak. Rey hadn’t been surprised when Han himself had sent her a message through Chewy soon afterward, letting her know that Padmé was so sorry but was going to have to cancel their call this month.  
  
It didn’t make the news of her passing any easier when Rey had arrived at the Repair Center on Tuesday morning, and Chewy had taken her aside and told her gently in cracked Kashyyyk, his own eyes puffy and mournful beneath thick, dark brows.  
  
In the silence around her that seemed all the louder in the wake of Finn’s abrupt departure, punctuated only by the occasional hum of a car lift or burst of an air compressor, it was so hard not to feel completely, utterly alone.  
  
No one was to blame for it, really.  
  
It wasn’t Finn’s fault he’d gotten a scholarship to one of the continent’s top undergraduate business programs, and it was so far away.  
  
It wasn’t Chewy’s fault that he was still out of town for Padmé’s funeral and services.  
  
It wasn’t any of her coworkers’ faults that Rey only maintained pleasant, congenial working relationships with them that usually didn’t extend past the closing of business hours and still made Rey feel like she was alone in a crowd when they did.  
  
It wasn’t the fault of the three men whose dates she’d accepted after fellow mechanic Jessika convinced her to try an online dating site that Rey had grown uncomfortable enough that she'd eventually snuck out of the restaurants via the back door before the dates had even finished. The men had done nothing blatant to make her nervous — well, at least, the first two hadn’t, and maybe there’d been nothing wrong with them at all. But then again, perhaps that sharp curl of warning in her stomach Rey had come to rely upon so closely since she was a little girl had meant something vile and wrong could have happened with them like it had almost happened so many years ago, and she would not take that risk.

To Jessika's disappointment more than her own, Rey had taken down her profile soon after.  
  
But even still… Rey had her green things and her flowers, her books, her workouts, her meditation and her Netflix account, she told herself. She had her mechanical tinkering and her arts and crafts, and the current light of her life, BeeBee, the short, white and orange spotted stray Jack Russell Terrier that had kept coming by the door of her apartment building every day last spring, howling mournfully, until her neighbors were up in arms. Rather than seeing it dragged off to the pound, Rey had convinced her with treats to come inside, and the charismatic, bubbly little dog had decided to stay.  
  
Stars, she even had the _Force_ , and felt its glorious presence inside her and all around her in ways almost no one else in the world could. To some extent, being one of the very, very small — and increasingly decreasing — number of Force-sensitives left had created different challenges and facilitated the direction of an anonymous life, but it was still a miracle for which Rey was grateful daily.  
  
And, _and_ she had her precious memories of her time on the road with Finn and her years at Varykino — so many unexpected, delightful, exhilarating, terrible, beautiful experiences with wonderful people that she would treasure forever, whether or not she was still there, or they were still here.  
  
It, all of it, was more than even she could have ever imagined as an abandoned, unwanted child.  
  
So when finally Rey stood and returned to the glossy red Chandrila ZY 52 Spyder waiting for her heart of the Service Center, she did it with a grateful heart, all thoughts of loneliness and any remaining melancholy over Padmé’s loss locked tightly away.  
  
When she returned to her apartment that evening, she walked and fed a bouncing, yipping, scrabbling BeeBee — now much happier and, dare she say, fatter than the small dog had been when Rey had first seen her — and promptly made dinner for herself, tonight the creamiest, butteriest pot of boxed mac n’ cheese that Rey could whip up with the limited ingredients in her pantry and fridge.  
  
It wasn’t until she flopped onto her futon, warm bowl of pasta in hand and a quarter of its contents already shoved in her mouth, that she was confronted with one of the final — to her — elements of Padmé’s passing:  
  
A blank piece of paper on the small, reupholstered coffee table directly in front of her couch.  
  
She’d already mailed out condolence letters she’d made herself to Maz and Han — and Leia, by extension, though Rey didn’t know her very well. But this one, she had assiduously avoided looking at as she passed back and forth through the living room to shower and later to retrieve BeeBee’s favorite orange ball. Now, however, it stared at her tauntingly, as it had for the past three days.  
  
Only two words were written on it:  
  
' _Dear Ben'._  
  
As if it could block her view of it, Rey pulled her laptop onto her lap, quickly pulling up the Netflix account she shared with Finn and two of his university friends. BeeBee bounced onto the couch beside her, panting happily, the by now much-slimed orange ball in mouth. Rey fondly scratched vigorously behind the small dog’s ears, promptly causing her to drop the ball to the ground, mouth wide and tongue lolling in delight.  
  
She paused briefly. “What do you think, Bee? Drama or Action tonight?”  
  
BeeBee yipped.  
  
“I agree. Drama it is.”  
  
Of course the first hit that came up under _Recently Added_ was Pride and Prejudice.  
  
“No thank you. Hate it. Moving on,” Rey muttered, scrolling past it but finding nothing else that sounded appealing in that thread. She moved down to _Popular on Netflix._  
  
Third in line: Pride and Prejudice.  
  
This time, she scrolled past it more aggressively. What moonbrain had tagged that movie as a drama when it was clearly primarily a romance? Admittedly, a terrible romance (she’d decided promptly after she and Jessika had done a movie night last year and Jessika had all but forced her to watch it), because Darcy was a stupid, _stubborn_ idiot who in real life would have never gone through all the hoops he had to win "lowborn" Elizabeth’s heart in the end.  
  
Her eyes were treacherously drawn back to the unwritten letter on the table, until she realized what she was doing and resolutely trained them back on her screen.  
  
_Dramas with a Strong Female Lead._  
  
Surprise, surprise. Pride and Bloody Prejudice.  
  
She growled, tangling her hands into her still wet-hair and tilting her head back to stare at the ceiling in despair. “Stars end, it’s as if the universe is _taunting_ me!” she groaned.  
  
Immediately, BeeBee valiantly swooped in to begin licking her exposed neck with the vigor of a small child with an ice cream cone. It was warm and wet and tickled slightly, and Rey let this go on for a lot longer than she probably should have before she sat up quickly and shook her head determinedly. “Right. I’m doing this.”  
  
Setting her computer aside, she slid to the floor and curled up in front of the coffee table, empty sheet in front of her and pen in hand.  
  
_Dear Ben,_ she thought. _I’m truly sorry about your grandmother. I know how much we both loved her. If you hadn’t been such a stubborn, selfish moof-milker when we met, maybe I could have given you these condolences in person._  
  
No, Padmé definitely wouldn’t approve of that.  
  
Again, she composed, _Dear Ben, Remember that time we saw each others’ most terrible memories and I gave literally everything I had to help you get through the worst day ever, and then you shoved me away and yelled at me stay the hell out of your life? Surprise: Shortly thereafter, your father hired me to work at his prized luxury car center in Corellia, and I’ve been hanging out with your hairy godfather almost every day since. Funny how life works out, isn’t it?_  
  
She definitely couldn’t say she regretted taking the job at Millennium Garage, though it did feel odd sometimes, to be so close to these people who had once been and were still in some way connected to a person with whom she’d shared such a bizarre, intimate encounter. But he had never told her to stay away from _them_ — not that she would have listened if he did. After finding out what he had about her, she suspected not even he would have been that cruel.  
  
Rey stared down at the blank page again. The obstinate, self-sufficient part of herself told her she shouldn’t even bother writing him. She’d spent her first fifteen years being caught in other people’s petty squabbles and emotional shitshows, and on the day she’d finally run away from it all, she’d resolved to never place herself in similar situations or let herself be treated that way again. Ben Solo had not only been an emotional trainwreck, he’d been _mean_ to her, and he had actually told her directly to never to contact him again, though his moonbrained reasons for it were dubious at best. So why in stars should she waste her energy thinking about him like she was now? He didn’t deserve that, and he _definitely_ didn’t deserve her in any way, shape, or form.  
  
And yet.  
  
Much as she tried to deny it and forget about it — and, until this week, she had with primarily success — Rey still remembered every detail from her first and only meeting with Padmé’s grandson, one that had shaken her to her core and forever left a small part of her mind feeling empty and cold.  
  
There’d been a lot of bad that day, yes, but there’d… there’d been a not insignificant amount of good, too.  
  
And that was the part she sometimes missed.

**_(To be continued: Rey's flashback of that day that directly follows this -- on to the next chapter!)_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 will be finished after the first week of March and it is literally 18,000 words of pure Reylo goodness. Finally, you’ll find out about the Big Encounter between Ben and Rey. :) Stay turned, friends, although I would be so very happy to hear your thoughts on Rey's first foray here.
> 
> Also, is there anyone who might be interested in being a beta for this? I am a grammar nazi myself, but I'd be really grateful for someone with excellent eagle eyes to read through the finished draft right before I publish it to catch any small repeated/missing words that sometimes slip in/out when I'm making my final edits. Time commitment should only be about the time it normally takes you to read a chapter, or a little longer, every couple of weeks. Please message me if you'd like to discuss it more!


	4. The Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rey and Ben finally meet for the first time... almost three years ago. This is meant to continue directly from Rey’s POV in the last chapter — so perhaps jump to the last few paragraphs of that for a refresher before diving in. It's 40,000 words, so... pace yourself? 
> 
> Chapter warnings: Violence, and, indicated in two brackets in-text: the first, an anxiety attack, and the second, animal abuse (I know; what?!). P.S. Sorry for all the Mandalorian hate in this chapter. Somebody had to be that guy.

_

**_Two and a half years ago_ **

_

 

Rey’s first trip to Coruscant was a whirlwind of 360-degree sights, blaring sounds, and at times delicious, at times horrific smells that at first had left her reeling. After spending more than two years slowly traversing the continent with Finn, taking odd jobs to get by in towns, villages, and small cities when they weren’t walking or busing through often remote landscapes, the muted, artificial shades of blue and grey that constituted the hundreds of skyscrapers of the planet’s largest metropolis were a jarring transition, to say the very least.

Even the _Force_ felt different here -- so much life packed into one comparatively small space in the form of millions of noisy, chaotic, emotion-filled people that it was almost smothering at first, and Rey had spent her first twenty minutes in Coruscant International seated beside a small, digitally programmed fountain of dancing water, eyes closed, _breathing_ through her elevated heart rate until the sea of thoughts and feelings and swirl of rapid-fire, energetic motion no longer felt like it was pressing in on her from all sides, but instead simply flowed _through_ her -- like the sturdy, solid, graceful desert arches of rust-colored rock through which the elements passed with ease but did not themselves bend or budge.

When she finally felt adjusted to this strange, bustling place, it took another half hour or so to drag herself from eagerly gawking through the fascinating specialty shops and downright _mouthwatering_ eateries that lined her particular terminal and into a taxi to her hotel.

To her utter amazement, this buzzing metal and cement ecosystem and the towering edifices within it stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction, often blocking views of the very sky itself. Given her overwhelming familiarity with the sands of Jakku, Rey was all too aware of the existence of places on the planet without a speck of greenery, but this -- this was something else entirely.

Once she'd torn herself from the small plane window halfway into the two-hour flight from the Lake Country’s small airport (Another first! The small plane’s takeoff especially had left her buzzing with glee and wondering why in R’iia’s name no one else sitting around her looked even fractionally excited that they were actually _flying through the sky_ ), Rey had keenly thumbed through an old Coruscant guidebook Padmé had given her.

The former capital city of the Old Republic, she learned, had lost much of its luster in the twenty-five years after the final, bloody clashes between a crumbling, fleeing United Federation of Republics government and the imploding Underworld Empire crime syndicate that had both been centered there. Out of the destruction and subsequent government restructuring had risen a grittier, gnarlier but proud city, those residents who had remained toughened not only by the years of instability and violence, but by a sense of being left behind by the new Alliance of Free Republics’ shifting of the capital to Chandrila, a small port country just east of Naboo.

After leaving her bag at her Uscru District hotel, a five-star leviathan that had shocked her by its ease of check in, Rey decided to spend her only evening in the city exploring the nearby sights. Apparently, the Uscru District was known for its entertainment venues, and she quickly encountered hundred foot tall flashing neon screens that stretched across _blocks_ advertising facial care products, shows and everything else under the sun. Fascinatingly, these were juxtaposed with immense, boldly colored murals and messages that had been skillfully graffitied across the lower levels of looming buildings and down shadowed, winding alleyways.

Munching happily on what was possibly one of the most delicious bantha burgers she’d ever had in her life (which she'd purchased from a vehicle lining the street called a “food truck”), Rey followed one particularly breathtaking wall of graffiti deeper into a quieter underground network that branched off from the larger alleyways and main streets -- to another metro station, she assumed.

The deeper she went, eyes wide and lips slightly parted in awed appreciation, the bigger, more stunning creations appeared on the arched cement around her: boldly sprayed words of inspiration and creative or coarse insult, night cityscapes alongside her and beautiful fantasy landscapes overhead, immense rathars and rancors and terrifying mythical creatures like gorogs and anklays with razor-sharp teeth bared, scenes of epic battles from ancient legends with glowing swords and yellow-eyed demons.  

Oh, Finn would have _loved_ this (though he would have been terrified by the lifelike group of attacking anklays), and she wished more than ever that her friend wasn’t so far away so they could have explored this vast, almost alien city together.

Although she had to squint in the dimming, widely interspersed lights to see them, each painting was vivid and unique and stunning, and had Rey’s fingers just _itching_ for the freedom of a can of paint and an empty bit of wall herself.

On the last bite of burger, her feet slowed.

A round-shouldered, hulking figure cloaked in black loomed on the wall ahead.

For one of the very few times in her life, she suddenly lost all desire to eat.

A depiction of the most feared, most destructive, most murderous Force-sensitive of the past half millennium stared coldly down at her in all his diabolical glory.

The art was old enough that flecks of cement had begun to crumble around it, water damage liberally peeling away at the paint. Over half the faceless, robot-like mask and helmet, someone had later sprayed in inelegant red sprawl, _‘Eat Ren.’_

The decaying image didn’t change the fact that this person, this monster, had butchered _thousands_ in the name of power and a long-fallen criminal empire, and had frightened Force knew how many children who’d heard the stories afterward into fearing the dark of the night.

And yet once, somehow, a very long time ago, the kindest, warmest, most sensible woman Rey knew had briefly _loved_ this cold-blooded killer, or something like it, when he was a man and not a mask.

“I didn’t know what love was, then,” Padmé had told Rey some months ago with a heavy sigh. “Love of country, yes, but of a man? Absolutely not. I _was_ , however, inexperienced and deeply in lust with an extremely handsome, single-minded gentleman who, unbeknownst to me, was living a lie.” It was the most, and littlest, she had ever spoken to Rey about her relationship with the man called Anakin Skywalker. “And then I felt my babies moving and kicking and _living_ inside me before _he_ , before anyone else knew about them except my physician and my closest friends, and I knew the truth. I’d do anything to protect them, to keep them safe. And… so came the end of one life, and the start of another.”

Rey glanced down -- her gaze drawn to Darth Vader’s graffitied hand.

Depicted in it with one long, sure stroke was his horrific, legendary weapon of carnage: a glowing sword of red.

Even isolated as she had been in Jakku, she knew the stories well enough. Until Vader had risen, lightsabers had been archaic myths of old and nothing more. Every culture and language across the globe had their stories of the deadly tools of light that had been widely-used by once-large populations of Force-sensitives who followed the old religions and often warred between each other, until the stones required to make them had been mined to extinction. It was said that the last of the sabers -- and wielders -- had been destroyed millennia ago in an epic religious battle (like the one depicted on the very walls behind her) between good and evil, Jedi and Sith, called the First Purge.

The site of the clash, a faraway island, had subsequently sunk into the sea in a volcanic eruption of cataclysmic proportions. And so the art of lightsaber crafting, and the very materials necessary for it, had vanished from the face of the planet.

No one knew how Darth Vader had constructed his, which had only served to make him all the more formidable and terrifying. When the Empire had fallen it had never been found, so the world had believed it destroyed, until Kylo Ren had used the same weapon decades later, striking the same fear of Vader into the hearts of not only First Order enemies but people everywhere.

It was a corrupted weapon of pure evil, whispered pilgrims of the old Force religion who passed by Varykino on the Takadona Way -- one that could be wielded only by a Force-sensitive who had given themselves fully to the Dark Side.

And it was here that the legends of old grew fuzzy and strange and almost unrealistic to Rey: This distinct, binary nature of the Force -- and how seriously everyone took whichever ‘side’ a Force-sensitive claimed they were on, as if choosing between one or the other was a conscious decision that equated whether someone’s very soul was good or evil.  

But the Force that she had felt and known and breathed and lived every day of her life wasn’t like that. It just… was. And it was _everything_ \-- the light of day, the dark of night, the shades of grey at dusk and twilight and all the colors of the earth, and all of it together had kept her alive all these years.

Nor did Rey believe Ben Solo was evil, simply because he had been able to use Darth Vader’s red blade. A year later, his letters were still at times prickly, pompous and aggravating. But, as he’d either become more tolerant of or ignoring of “R’s” presence in the process, they had also become thoughtful, dryly humorous, and occasionally deeply remorseful, particularly if he had been honest about doing the terrible deeds the First Order had commanded him only to keep Padmé safe. Even though virtually no one else on the planet except a very few of the small Varykino staff seemed to believe this, when it came to his grandmother, Ben was such a blatantly devoted, loving moonbrain that Rey didn’t for a moment doubt it was the truth.

And it was this -- to what _end_ a Force-sensitive chose to use the Force inside them --  for which Rey could understand categorization.

She surveyed Vader’s crumbling likeness with narrowed eyes of contempt. To be given such rare, immense power and have used it to inflict such atrocities and carnage… the thought was monstrous, especially to her.

It was _these_ “Dark Side” Force-users, those who hurt and killed and destroyed for self-gain and pleasure, who had forced innocent Force-sensitives like herself to hide a part of themselves away, to hide _themselves_ away, as understandably terrified non-Force-sensitives built up an army and an arsenal to contain the people possessing magic they didn’t understand -- all of whom, they believed, had the power to easily destroy them without a second thought.

Cautiously, she reached out her fingers to the glowing red shaft of Vader’s saber. A moment before her skin connected with the cement, a small, nearly imperceptible shudder broke the calm surface of the Force - a faint, muffled scream, or hundreds, or thousands, as if the final agony of this weapon’s victims was somehow imbued in even this simple rendering of it.

Rey sucked in a soft breath and jerked her fingers away from the wall, her chest aching. What had become of this death-dealing lightsaber on that day Padmé preferred to never speak of, when she had faced death and Ben had destroyed the First Order’s powerful, malevolent core to save her life, nearly losing his own in the fight and fires that had followed?

She turned to go, but gave Darth Vader’s lightsaber a final, sidelong glare. “I hope you burned to ash, too,” she spat.

That was when she felt a familiar prickle at the back of her neck and tug of warning in her belly.

Rey froze. Immediately, instinctively, she expanded her awareness into the energy that surrounded her.

Within only a moment of searching, she sensed them: multiple presences approaching from the same direction she’d come ten minutes earlier, though it was impossible to distinguish exactly how many with the sheer mass of life crowding the Force in the buildings above and the streets all around her, somewhere just beyond these painted cement walls.

A sudden, distant burst of masculine laughter told her it wasn’t only a few.

Rey’s fight-or-flight instinct immediately flared to high.

Looking around her, she realized she was still _alone_ in this dimly-lit, tunneled graffiti grotto. And despite the handful of genuinely good men she had encountered since she had met Finn, every instinct within her, everything she had experienced since she was three, screamed at her in letters as large and flashing as the electronic billboards outside to _beware large, laughing groups of them in lonely, empty places_.

No matter the country. No matter the culture.

Hastily, she tracked deeper down the graffittied tunnel, but the cluttered array of murals and artwork soon took a sharp leftward turn, and she was faced with a long, crumbling set of staircases that appeared to have been partially destroyed in some decades-old firefight.

They descended through yet another deteriorating shaft into shadows.

“Damn,” she breathed.

Stupid, stupid, she’d been so _stupid_ to assume this was just another worn-down metro tunnel (though perhaps it once had been) and come down it as far as she had it, as if the dark alleys of Coruscant were somehow different than the dark alleys of any town she’d been in. The voices behind her were growing louder -- louder and obstreperous, as if they were either drunk or very, very pleased about something, and Rey momentarily considered following wherever these stairs led, but another side of her warned it could be to an even more isolated dead end.

No. She was going to have to face this head on and hope for the best.

Armed with only a bloody _half-empty leather shoulder pouch_ beneath her warm cloak.

She cursed under her breath, swiftly looking around the darkened, dripping, abandoned surroundings for _anything_ that could serve as a weapon in the _Forcebegoodhopefullynonexistent_ case she might need it. Chunks of what looked to be cement or plaster were scattered at the bend of the tunnel a few feet away, fallen from either past violence or simple age. With a mental tug, a ball-sized piece flew into her hand, but as soon as she grasped it, it literally crumbled in her fingers.  

Stars, if only she hadn’t let sweet Padmé convince her to leave behind the faithful, sturdy walking staff that had been her companion, deterrent and protector through many threats for almost a decade!

Rey whirled toward the falling-apart staircase to survey what remained of the twisted, jagged railing. Through a clenched jaw, she held back a hiss of frustration, less at Padmé than at the situation at hand. For the love of the Force, one _evening_ \-- she’d been so looking forward to one fun, simple evening experiencing the joy of being someplace new and different before the meeting tomorrow she hadn’t exactly been relishing the thought of, but instead here she was dreading worst-case survival scenarios and looking for makeshift self-defense tools, just because she happened to be a _woman alone_.

As passionate _hatred_ toward the world’s current, gendered status quo exploded within her, another small, instinctive tug curled in her gut, urging her on.

It was now or never.

Rey took a small, steadying breath, heart thudding at the speed of light in her chest. It was only due to practice since childhood that she could drop down so deeply into the steady energy of the Force inside her when panic might have otherwise preferred to flood her body. She felt the strength of it streaming through her veins, felt it all around her, and she pictured herself getting out of this -- if there was anything _to_ get out of, even... envisioned herself walking by it, meeting it if necessary, and emerging into the packed, busy streets of Coruscant again, unharmed.

Mind clear and resolved, she squared her shoulders and marched back out into the long graffiti grotto.

Almost simultaneously, a group of seven men who didn’t look to be terribly older than her appeared in the dim light at the other end of it, wearing brightly colored, Coruscant street-level style jumpsuits. Singing raucously, animatedly, and horrendously off-tune in Gamorrese -- her first win; that race was usually easy to _persuade_ \-- the mixture of squat and sturdy men were stumbling forward with dark bottles, the contents of which she could only speculate included something cheap, foul-tasting and highly potent.

They were twirling between them a handful of expensive-looking purses that definitely did _not_ belong to them.

 _Stars' end. I’ve run headlong into a pack of pickpockets_. _Of course. Of bloody course._

Her eyes flicked up to the corners of the tunnel to look for surveillance cameras; to no one’s surprise, she found none, and the lack of watching eyes or law enforcement meant she could liberally utilize the Force in her defense if need be without risking detection.

Good. That was very good.

Because the group of them had just caught sight of her, and, amidst slowed conversation, were eying her like a piece of freshly cooked meat.

Without hesitation, Rey conversationally, cajolingly projected silently to each of them, _‘You will look past me and continue walking.’_

For good measure, she repeated it three times, which was once _more_ than her Force suggestions typically needed.

Immediately, some half-baked joke about _scabwit_ tourists and bandara beetles that would swarm Gamorr beaches during mating cycles started up again, the men focusing back on each other and their obvious success in thievery. They continued careering toward her, speaking energetically without another glance in her direction.

 _Thank the stars, thank the_ **_stars..._ **

Rey quickened her pace determinedly, only fifteen or so feet away now. She could nearly _taste_ it, that sweet moment of relief when she passed them and they passed her and both parties kept on walking, and --

And then the four pale-skinned men at the back of the group behind the hulking first row of Gamorreans slowed to leer directly at her.

_Son of a bantha._

Nearly on top of them now, Rey could make out their features in the dim light, and nearly translucent, spidery-veined skin that lacked the traditional yellow-green pigmentation of the Gamorreans.

No... these men were Mandalorian, a race that had always been more if not outright resistant to her Force suggestions.

Her heart sunk and sped up simultaneously.

 _Damn, damn,_ **_damn_ **_\--_

With a quick sidestep, one of them — orange-haired with striking purple eyes — closed the narrow gap between the group of men and Rey a moment before she would have passed, effectively blocking her exit.

“Whoa, whoa, beautiful lady!” he crowed in broken, heavily accented Alliance Basic, smiling in a way she assumed he believed was charming. “What is rush? Somewhere exciting you go in such beautiful clothing?”

His violet eyes slowly, languorously flicked over her simple tunic and leggings, barely even visible beneath her cloak. Rey stiffened automatically, her lip curling in aversion; the motion was base and uninvited and _exhaustingly_ familiar.

“Oi, you idiotic fraggers!” barked another of the Mandalorians in the gutteral sounds of Gamorrese, “where d’you think you going?”

The Gamorreans, true to form, had predictably obeyed Rey’s original command and simply kept walking. For a moment, they froze a few yards down the tunnel, looking startled, until they slowly looked back at their light-skinned compatriots in confusion.

It sparked an idea that she swiftly stored in the back of her mind.

“A thrilling date, actually, and I’m extremely late,” she informed the violet-eyed one scathingly. “Now _step aside._ ”

Giving them -- and herself -- one last chance to avoid this, she moved to his left to weave around him.

Her heart thudded hard with adrenaline when he quickly stepped the same way, cutting her off again: the same odd Mandalorian mental barrier still held constant, then.

“Pretty lady is bossy, bossy!” a green-haired Mandalorian chided with a cluck of his tongue, stepping up beside his friend. Over his shoulder, he threw to the other two in their native Mando'a tongue, “She’s a lying _skazz_ ; no man but a _no_ man wants a pushy wretch of a witch on top.”

They laughed uproariously, and Rey knew with swift and steady clarity this was only going to go one way: Winning an inevitable confrontation as quickly as bloody well possible.  

She took a small breath, feeling the Force buzzing through every nerve in her body… filling her with confidence, with strength and sureness of insight and movement.

She would begin by improving her odds.

“Gentlemen, I’m afraid your friends are being very rude _,_ ” she called sweetly in Gamorrese, throwing the three most pliant minds an extra carrot by providing the suggestion in their native tongue. “Kindly ensure they leave me alone and _move along.”_

The orange-haired Mandalorian looked back at Rey with a sneer, stepping close enough to back her into the graffiti-covered wall. He placed an arm alongside her head, so close the nauseating stench of alcohol radiated into her senses. “No, _skazz,_ you go when _I_ say.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the broadest of the Gamorreans stride back to the group of Mandalorians, grabbing the arm of the green-haired one who’d helped flank Rey; he immediately looked furious. “Come on, scabwit, move along,” he slurred in Gamorrese, yanking him down the tunnel.

“Leave the _v'lch_ ; let’s go,” a second echoed, lumbering back toward them and seizing another two of the Mandalorians, who both exploded in fury at the encroachment.

“The Force-damned _hell—“_

 _“_ Let _go_ of me, you fragging _sleemo_!”

 _‘How dare they insult you! Don’t let them get away with it!’_ Rey thought.

Someone -- it was unclear who -- threw a punch.

The situation deteriorated immediately amid shouts of outrage.

With a _thud_ , the green-haired Mandalorian flew into the wall beside her, and a Gamorrean swiftly went down beneath the two remaining kicking, pummeling Mandalorians, before another Gamorrean swooped in to yank them apart. The thick, boar-like Gamorreans might have been hefty, but the Mandalorians were faster and more vicious, and the Gamorreans also seemed uncertain if they should be only fighting the Mandalorians, or also each other.

In the middle of all of this, the cell phone Padmé had given her for the trip started ringing loudly in her travel pouch — likely Padmé herself calling to check in. The happily jingling tune Rey had picked out so carefully yesterday morning was now a paradoxical, almost comedic accompaniment to the all-out brawl currently occurring.

Rey would have smiled in triumph at her rather stunning victory had her heart not sank at the realization she was going to have to outright lie about her evening to Padmé to hide the truth: that she’d been harassed and very nearly assaulted on a trip the older woman had paid for.

And she wasn’t out of it yet.

Spitting a vehement string of curses in Mando’a, the violet-eyed Mandalorian boxing her in took a small, staggering step backward, staring wide-eyed at the melee.

It presented an opening.

Swiftly, Rey tried to slip around him, but one veiny, pale hand shot out, wrapping around her left arm tightly. “What I tell you, stupid _skazz,_ you go nowhere until I say!”

Her body knew exactly what was coming, and it poised with readiness and adrenaline. Her heart beat rapidly but steadily, and her hand tightened around the only tool she’d been able to find in the abandoned stairwell, hidden in the folds of her cloak all this time.

Then she looked up at the man still leering over her with death in her eyes.

In Mando'a, she said, “I wouldn’t be so certain of that.”

Before he could even begin to look surprised, Rey swung a three-foot, broken metal rail into the side of his kneecap. There was a terrible _crunch_ ; with a howl, he fell to his knees. Whirling the rail around her head like her staff, she swiftly brought it down across his shoulders, yelling with loathing and exertion.

He plummeted to the ground, body limp.

Although the large fight had spilled a bit ahead of her, the Mandalorians and Gamorreans tripping over each other in their now drunken, bloody efforts to pummel each other into the dirt, this one had been the only clear obstacle between her and the tunnel exit.

Dropping the rail, Rey lunged toward that precious tunnel end and—

Arms grabbed her from behind, yanking her to a stop and encircling her in a viselike grip. Rey shrieked and kicked and wriggled with the ferocity of over two decades of fending for herself by whatever means necessary, but whoever held her fast was strong as an anooba’s jaw. She caught a flash of lime-green hair — the second Mandalorian, she realized, as he hissed in her ear, “You! _You_ brought this, you filthy _skazz_ wh _—“_

Baring her teeth, Rey launched herself upward to plant her feet on the back of a passing Gamorrean. With a scream of effort and all her strength in the Force, she used the solid wall of flesh to violently shove both her and the Mandalorian restraining her backward into the tunnel wall. They slammed against it, old paint and plaster raining down around them.

With a surprised gasp, the green-haired man's grip loosened.

In a heartbeat, Rey called the rail back into her open hand with the Force and spun, slamming the metal rod upside his head.

He dropped like a stone.

Rey didn’t stick around to see him hit the ground.

She hadn’t moved so fast since she and Finn had been chased by three ravenous Krayt dragons through the Tatooine Desert. She ducked under a snarling Gamorrean, his face dripping blood, and with a small sweep of her hand jerked a staggering Mandalorian out of her way with an invisible tug at his shirt as she hurtled toward the tunnel maze that would lead her back to the street.

She didn’t stop running until she was standing in the insane luxury of her hotel room, head pounding, lungs burning and heaving with exertion, the charge of adrenaline still running up her arms and legs. She felt grimy, _filthy_ , hot and at once so very cold, and without pause she bolted for the house-sized ‘fresher, turned the shower’s gold handles to the hottest setting available, stripped, and ripped the soap bar from its bow-wrapped cloth packaging.

She scrubbed away the touch of unwanted hands on her skin until her body was bright red.  

The last nineteen months had been like something out of an impossible dream: the stability of staying in a safe, warm place that even looked like something out of a fairytale, with a family, a community that had loved and accepted her… that felt like home.

In the bliss of it all, Rey had forgotten what this was like:

Fighting for her life.

Even with the advantage the Force had given her, she had always been fighting for her life, and on the day she left Varykino — whenever it came, and she knew it would, for no one in her life had ever stayed forever, and neither had Rey herself — it would be back to _this_ again.

The sleepless nights. The unspeakable loneliness. Attacks like what she’d just experienced — except they might be _worse_ now, now that she was no longer a child but a halfway attractive woman. The worry about where she could find her next meal, next gulp of water, next shelter and next job with people who would respect her rather than take advantage of her.

Even in the steam of the shower, her hands, her legs, her entire body had begun trembling uncontrollably. This was why she typically never, _ever_ let herself dwell upon this, on all the hardship and negativity that had passed through her life -- it didn't help her, didn't serve her, and she may as well have stabbed herself with a poison-coated knife for the paralysis that threatened to overtake her.

As the last of the adrenaline that had carried her to safety wore off, she sank to the pristine marble floor, teeth chattering, and she wrapped her arms tightly around her knees.

Just for this moment, she thought of what she hadn’t allowed herself to — of Padmé’s increasingly trembling hands, dizzy spells and paling face; the growing frequency of her children’s visits, and the sound of Leia and Padmé arguing behind closed doors.

No, Varykino’s singular magic, Padmé’s warmth and Maz’s often-cryptic guidance, spontaneous plane trips to strange new cities and even the unimaginable opulence of this bloody ‘fresher… Rey knew _it wouldn’t last forever_ , even though, more than anything, she wished so much that it would _—_ that the day for leaving would simply never come.

Like an fathomless, inexhaustible ache, Rey missed all of it already like a hole inside her heart.

Never one to waste anything so precious as water, she blindly fumbled behind her to turn the shower off. Then, without moving another inch, she curled into a ball, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed.   

___

Rey slept like a rock clear through a jarring wake-up call at 10:30 the next morning.

It had been so easy, in the wonder and exploration and then the nightmare of the previous day, to avoid contemplating her true purpose in coming -- being _sent --_ to Coruscant.

A harsh, lingering bout with a late-summer illness had left Padmé worrying for a week straight that she’d have to miss her visit with Ben for the first time since he’d been imprisoned. Rey, on the other hand, had been more concerned for Padmé’s health than any minor emotional discomfort _Ben_ might feel at her absence.

‘Astonishment,’ then, didn’t quite begin to encapsulate Rey’s initial reaction to the radical solution the older woman had proposed to her a mere _day_ before she was scheduled to leave for Coruscant (which of course meant there would be no chance to notify Ben of any changes).

Now, with both a 12:15 check-in deadline and the ugly, floating mushroom-shaped grey concrete of the Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center looming ahead of her hired car’s tinted windows, there was no avoiding one singular fact:

Ben Organa Solo, direct scion of Princess/Senator Leia Amidala Organa and legendary pro racecar driver Han Solo, grand-scion of a former Queen of Naboo and a murderous crime lord -- and snobbish, sarcastic, Force-sensitive and supercilious in his own right -- was going to be about as pleased as a raging rancor to see Rey Random in place of his beloved grandmother for Padmé’s quarterly Central Detention Center visit.

Their non-existent acquaintanceship had improved slightly -- though _only_ slightly -- since his infuriating reaction to her mere presence as his grandmother’s transcriber. The turning point in Rey’s antagonistic view about having to continue with the entire scheme (since Ben clearly hated her) had been a letter from him describing a challenge around, of all bloody things, dog training _._

Rey had nearly spluttered in disbelief at the idea that Ben Solo had _elected_ to take a skills-building course pairing prisoner trainers with ill-behaved stray animals to give them a better chance at adoption. According to Padmé, it wasn’t his first time doing it, either.

It didn’t help that Rey empathized deeply with shelter animals. She’d even found a part-time job in a rescue shelter in Jedha for a few months while she and Finn were rebuilding their finances there before continuing onward. She’d always departed the shelter nightly with a draining mix of accomplishment and heartbrokenness -- at how, despite her untiring efforts to give them a daily dose of love, she knew so many of the sweet animals would still be waiting in cages, some for years and years _,_ for a permanent family to take them home.

So when she learned Ben’s new dog was spending the majority of their training room time together trying to frantically bounce from person to person rather than pay attention, she decided to risk scribbling at the end of Padmé’s response,

_‘Fido’s probably in panic and/or denial that his people parents left him, and keeps looking for them in everyone he sees. Forget training him right now and just have fun with him -- let him know he’s very loved and that you’re not going anywhere. When he finally believes that, he’ll stop looking for someone else and focus on you. -R’_

She'd half expected some scathing, psychoanalytical retort to that in his next letter, but instead, Ben only wrote that the dog was calming down, but there was still the not-so-small matter of house training. So Rey cheekily wrote, ' _Your grandmother tells me you’re tall. Fido probably mistakes your legs for trees. Try using that carpentry class of yours to make him something else to work with.'_

This had apparently crossed a line, because in his next letter to Padmé, Ben demanded she tell her transcriber to stop deliberately antagonizing him.  

“What — I was _not!”_ Rey had exclaimed; couldn’t _believe_ that like an over-cosseted schoolboy he’d immediately run to the teacher to tell on her after two innocent comments! After a (surprise, surprise) clean background check and his grandmother’s vouching for her in person at her latest visit with him at the CDC, Rey felt as though she’d done more than enough to earn an iota of his rare trust.

Padmé had chuckled at first at learning Rey's actual comments, but then she'd sighed quietly. “Rey, I know I keep asking you to be patient with Ben, and I’m more grateful than you can possibly imagine that you have been.” Her lips turned downward in a small, sad frown. “I'm not sure anyone outside our family has ever teased him without malicious intent. As a child he was bullied terribly; it made his time at boarding schools extremely... difficult, is a kind word.”

Rey’s brow had pulled down into a surprised frown. “Oh. That… never occurred to me. I was just… trying to be helpful and silly.”

She felt a small, sympathetic ache for him, although it was quickly followed by her specially-reserved-for-Ben-Solo irateness that he was still being a ridiculous prick about it. After all, Rey had been bullied as a child, too, and she could still discern when someone was being funny versus being mean.

Briefly, she’d worried her lower lip. “I can stop my silly comments, I suppose…”

But Padmé had immediately shaken her head. “Oh no, Rey dear, I certainly don’t want to see you feel uncomfortable sharing your wonderful personality if you feel so inspired. It would do my grandson a world of good to be reminded that beyond myself, there are other nice, sometimes silly people on the planet. But you may need to alert him that your intentions in doing so are good.”

Rey thought that had been what she’d been _trying_ to do from the very beginning, but still, she wrote in Padmé’s next note, _‘I wasn’t antagonizing you, you moof-milker, I was trying to make you laugh!’_

Ben had never once mentioned or acknowledged her again. But somehow, Padmé’s explicit approval of Rey’s natural instinct to _comment when appropriate_ (or not appropriate) _,_ regardless of Ben’s prickliness about it, had broken the tension in the entire letter-writing process for her. Her renewed comfort and exuberance with it had seemed to coax out Padmé’s as well, and when Rey would think of other fun or outlandish stories from Varykino’s new stint as a hiker’s inn to share with Ben, they would recount them in written form together, laughing. Even Ben himself had by and large become less provoking, and she came to see there were facets of him that could even be considered… _tolerable_.

So Rey felt she had a pretty good grasp on what she was signing up for when she’d agreed to Padmé’s beseeching request that she visit Ben in Padmé’s place.

She was far more concerned with the thought of simply entering the very heart of the Alliance fortress renown for its ability to hold errant Force-sensitives.

Did that mean the Central Detention Center was best in class at detecting secret Force-sensitives, too?

Rey had spent her entire _life_ keeping her head down, avoiding any run-ins with law enforcement. Of course, just because she was a Force-sensitive didn’t make her a criminal, she’d told herself time and time again since she was eleven. But she had heard more than once that someone somewhere kept a not-so-private list of every known Force-sensitive in the world, and once a name was on it, there was no coming off. The idea of willingly walking into a place she could very well be more easily found out triggered a sense of dread reserved especially for decade-old nightmares of being discovered and coerced into doing any number of terrible things -- or having the Force cut off from her entirely, like it had been Ben.

And Rey was never going to be owned, tracked, trapped, or beholden to anyone, _ever_ again.  

Padmé must have sensed her nerves -- and Rey could only pray to the Force she didn’t wonder too much at her reasons for them -- because, through a hacking cough, she had patiently explained and re-explained the entire CDC check-in protocol and visitation process until Rey felt reassured beyond a doubt:

As long as she was polite and unhurried and followed every procedure, there was no reason why they wouldn’t scrutinize her beyond ensuring her face matched her identification card, that her Alliance police record was unsullied, and that she wasn’t bringing anything that could be construed as a weapon into the Center.

...beside _herself_ , of course. But they could never know that.

So Rey had taken a deep breath and agreed to all of it.

Still, there was one _final_ precaution she’d taken… one that hadn’t even occurred to her until Padmé had insisted upon providing her with warmer outfits for the trip. _(“Oh no, you’ll simply freeze in the clothes you have, dear! Coruscanti winters can be even more bitter than what you experienced in Hoth, and that detention center is positively bone-chilling...”_ )

An hour ago, Rey had donned that clothing like the oddest suit of armor anyone had ever worn.

As the hired car pulled up to the foot of the towering maximum-security prison’s uninviting main entrance, a set of double doors embedded in solid cement that said above in cold block print, “Enter Here”, she stepped out of the vehicle and caught a glance of herself in the reflection off the doors’ opaque transparisteel windows.

It was like seeing a complete stranger looking straight back at her from just inside.

She couldn’t help but stare at herself as she removed big, square sunglasses that Maz had given her that summer "to protect your eyes; they are like open windows into the truths of your soul." That had been one of the many Varykino lessons that Rey had been grateful for: the once-impossibility that sometimes gifts could be given freely and without conditions or the expectation of repayment.

Then, her lips curled upward ever-so-slightly into a grim, determined smile.

She was dressed in snow white, from the closely-fitting long-sleeve shirt, slacks, and hip-hugging belt all the way down to knee-high boots. She’d carefully arranged Padme's thick, tightly-woven ivory scarf in a practical yet sophisticated angle around her neck so the rest of it plunged over her shoulders and down her back past her knees. The comfortable, stretchy material beneath it was _much_ more form-fitted compared to what she’d preferred growing up, when it was far safer to have no womanly figure than even the hint of one. But this time, there’d been something almost…. almost _thrilling_ about dressing up, about seeing herself in a new way for a very practical purpose, and still feeling _good_ about it.

To complete the image, Rey had painstakingly pulled hair atop her head into a fairly large, intricate bun wrapped in gold lace trim that Padmé often sported herself and had shown Rey how to make only a few weeks into her stay at Varykino. She’d even wasted a whole extra fifteen bloody minutes -- cursing under her breath for a good half of it -- gingerly applying a light, careful coating of makeup.

And none of it had been for naught. Because here on the threshold of a building straight from her nightmares, she looked strong and elegant and fully high-bred... and therefore, she told herself, would be above a scintilla of instinctual suspicion from prison officials.

Even though the smallest whisper at the back of her mind reminded her that even being born royalty hadn’t worked for Ben Solo.

____

The Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center interior was exactly what Rey would have expected from the Alliance’s most infamous prison: a stark, lifeless greyscape of windowless walls, barren corridors and harsh artificial lights, which seemed to only grow bleaker the further she progressed through a seemingly endless parade of security checks and scans, look-overs and questioning, and heavy, code-locked metal doors that swung open with loud buzzes and immediately _clanged_ shut again.

What she didn’t expect was how _nice_ the prison official showing her to the visitation room would be.

As soon as Rey had exited the long security clearance process, a silver-uniformed, extraordinarily tall woman with short-cropped platinum hair had stepped forward to introduce herself as Captain Phasma, and had promptly welcomed Rey to the Center like some sort of diplomatic emissary sent on behalf of the entire country of Naboo itself.

 _Yes,_ Rey thought… Operation Least Suspicious Visitor of the Year was _working._

“I am very sorry to hear about Senator Emeritus Amidala’s illness,” Phasma said with a Coruscanti accent that matched Rey’s as she directed Rey deeper into the facility. With each step, a lanyard holding a square plastic tag that said _VISITOR_ with a barcode, photo of herself, and the date displayed beneath it smacked across Rey's chest. “I do hope it isn’t serious.”

Though her voice was authoritative and no-nonsense, it still showed concern, and Rey felt she could be honest with her. “She’s doing much better than she was a week ago, but she still felt unwell enough for the trip here. She was devastated she couldn’t come herself.”

“Well, we always enjoy hosting her. She’s a very kind woman. Remarkable, really,” Phasma commented, but then stopped mid-thought without elaborating on _what_ was remarkable. “Have you had a pleasant journey here, then?”  

The sensation of lifting off the planet’s surface like a bird in flight, the image of a seemingly endless cityscape, and the smell of alcohol on a leering smile flashed through her mind.

“Pleasant enough, thank you,” Rey replied politely, and almost immediately held back a grimace. It sounded like some vague nicety that Padmé would say to a visiting senator with whose political views she disagreed, so she elaborated, “I’m currently used to open spaces, rolling hills and green, growing things, so it’s been…” — _don’t say unnerving, don’t say ‘the last place I want to be’... —_ “rather a change.”

“Green, growing things and open spaces are rare in Coruscant,” the Captain agreed, steering them down a long corridor as grey, grungy and sterile as the rest of it, which was making it harder to memorize the route they were traveling. Lower-ranked corrections officers in dark grey inclined their heads to Phasma as they passed. “You must not be city-born.”

That seemed safe enough to answer vaguely. “This is my first time here. I'd heard plenty of stories, but it’s more immense than I could have possibly imagined.” A hard frown crossed her face. “Even here, though... there’s so much crime. Poverty.”  


“ _Especially_ here,” Phasma corrected. “It’s never been the same after the Empire took root sixty years ago. Even after they fell, the Alliance just left us to rot. It’s only kept falling apart since.”

This was said with a certain bitterness, which prodded Rey out of her own. After all, until she unwittingly placed herself in danger in an abandoned metro tunnel, she’d been thoroughly _enjoying_ her exploration of Coruscant.

“I haven’t been here long. Admittedly I’ve only seen a very small part of the city,” she offered earnestly, “but I’ve never encountered anything like the building and street art here. The artists and performers in the squares, the marketplaces with goods from almost everywhere, the _delicious_ food from every vendor I tried... there’s still so much creativity and life here, in spite of the hardships, too. I admire that. It feels hopeful. At least, to me.”   

Captain Phasma slowed beside a white door with a glowing red laser scanner beside it, then turned to look down at Rey appraisingly. It was a different expression from the penetrating assessment of the guards who’d interrogated her through security, so it didn’t make Rey nervous, though she had to tilt her head back to simply meet the much taller woman’s gaze.

After a moment, something in the hardened press of the prison official’s mouth softened. “That is the kindest thing I’ve ever heard an outsider say about our city in a very long time.”

Rey flushed and shook her head. “I did mean it, though. I wasn’t just saying it to be kind.”

“I can see that.” The woman swiped once at the datapad in her hand. With a short breath, she shook her head, almost in disbelief. “Prisoner 15871. It never ceases to amaze.” She glanced at Rey. “Have you met him previously?”

Rey frowned. “I... assume you’re referring to Ben Solo?”

Phasma nodded. “Within these walls, inmates are referred to only by number. We’ve found it decreases the number of, shall we say, _ego_ -based incidents significantly.”

When she thought of some of the lowlifes (and highlifes) that had rolled through Niima Outpost, Rey supposed she could understand the psychology behind it, but it still seemed… inhumane, somehow. “But I can still call him Ben, can’t I?”   

“Of course; visitors are exempt from this rule.” Phasma scanned her face. “You haven’t met him before, have you?”

Rey’s back stiffened slightly; stars, was she really so easily readable? “What makes you think that?” she asked quickly, tautly.  

Phasma shrugged a shoulder once, only slightly. “You’re young, he’s been in here awhile, and there’s… something about you that’s almost too pure.”

Thankfully, this was said more as an offhanded observation than an accusation, and Rey slowly relaxed again.

Well… there were far worse assumptions that could have been made about her.

She sighed. “Not in person, I haven’t, no.” _And not really in any other form, either._ As the Captain’s pale brows arched with obvious judgment, she added quickly, “I’ve heard plenty enough.”

Phasma let out a long breath. “Even so, careful he doesn’t chew you up and spit you out. I don’t care who you are, that one is a nerve burner with no discernment, and forty minutes is a long time.”

Forty minutes, her brain echoed.

The number sank deep into her psyche for what felt like the first time.

Forty minutes alone with Padmé’s cantankerous, elitist, unreasonable _bantha brain_ of a grandson. Stars, that seemed like a bloody _lifetime_ \--

Rey crushed the deteriorating line of thought before it could evolve further. Padmé had _not_ sent her all the way to Coruscant to hear that Ben had raged about it the entire time. _Rey_ hadn’t traveled all the way to Coruscant for Ben to rage about it the entire time.

No. She absolutely would not let him.  


Her shoulders straightened, and she focused back on Captain Phasma determinedly. “I’d like to see him try. It certainly won’t get him far with me.”

Phasma regarded her with surprise. After a second, something almost resembling approval flashed in her bright blue eyes. “Good.”

She gestured for Rey to place her passcard beneath the scanner. Once it read the barcode, the glowing red light beside the door handle flashed to yellow. “I’ll return in forty minutes to escort you out. Or sooner, if you alert Officers Rozu and Delwa inside. Otherwise, you’ll be given a fifteen-minute warning.”

Sensing she had an ally in this quite literally Force-forsaken place, Rey nodded, returning the regard in Phasma’s expression — which Rey suspected was not frequently given, and thus felt surprising and warm in her chest — with a sincere smile. “Thank you for your assistance, Captain Phasma. I truly appreciate it.”

“Good luck,” was all Phasma said, waving her own identification card under the scanner. The yellow light turned green, and the door buzzed loudly before opening with a soft _click_.

Inside was a surprisingly spacious off-white holding room that looked large enough to comfortably fit six or seven times the number of people currently inside it.

For a split second, Rey _breathed_ , reaching deep into the seemingly infinite well that was her anchor and her strength. The Force obligingly flowed through her, calming her nerves and grounding her nearly instantly.

Then she entered, her body buzzing with responsive alertness around a balanced center -- her “fighting calm,” as she’d come to think of it and automatically seemed to fall into whenever the stakes were high.

The door instantly locked again behind her.

The first thing Rey noticed was the clear barrier of transparisteel. Like it did inside Jakku’s only official -- and, as anyone might imagine, _extremely_ high-security -- banks, the supposedly bulletproof material stretched from wall to wall, effectively bisecting the length of the room and therefore only leaving her with a few feet to proceed before she met a long counter that appeared to be floating at waist-height. A worn-looking chair was placed before it, a few nearby slits cut into the steel to facilitate two-way conversation, she imagined. Cameras hovered near the ceiling at the intersection of the transparisteel and wall.

She swiftly noted the corrections officers Phasma had mentioned. They were both young and cold-faced, one wiry and one more rotund, standing motionlessly beside a similarly locked door on the opposite end of the room.

They were also holding the largest, most lethal-looking shock batons that Rey had ever seen. Z6’s: Finn had once pointed them out to her as riot control devices to avoid _at all costs_ as they’d skirted around an unruly town in Geonosis.

Obviously, the last thing Rey wanted was to appear she was eying up the security, so she quickly turned her attention to the room’s final occupant, sitting in the lone chair opposite her on the other side of the transparisteel.

He was already staring straight at her.

The one glaring -- _major_ \-- detail that hadn’t accurately translated from Padmé’s most recent (decade old) photos of her grandson but was immediately apparent now was just how much Ben Solo had grown into adulthood since. Even seated, he was, in a word, _massive_ , and seemed to practically pop out of the relatively large chair that was holding him.

While the seat supplied on the visitors’ side was... plush wasn’t quite the right word, but not entirely uncomfortable seemed descriptive — his was solid steel, and appeared to be bolted directly to the floor. His wrists were snugly cuffed to the chair’s arms, his ankles to the legs, while yet another thick metal strap tightly encircled his broad upper chest and arms, firmly securing him to the back of the chair. A dark, ugly band was wrapped around his throat like some sort of heavy metal choker.

At the sight of it, her stomach flipped and turned. Rey had only seen a full Force Suppression collar on anyone once before, and it sickened and disturbed her as much now as it had then.

On the whole, the man was so ludicrously restrained for something as innocuous as a brief visit with, supposedly, a friendly face that it made the presence of such heavily armed guards almost laughable. Rey would have expected this setup for the criminally insane, not the person she’d come to know through Padmé’s letters, even if he had once been Kylo Ren, dark specter feared by adults and children alike.

Did they take the same excessive precautions even when it was Padmé who visited him? How difficult must it be for her to see her grandson like this? Or... or for Ben to _have_ her see him like this, even?

Rey didn’t know what to say to him, for a moment forgot entirely what she had flown hundreds of miles here to say. ‘ _Hi, how are you?’_ seemed petty and insensitive when he was sitting across from her chained in place like a rabid animal.

So she just sat down.

As she moved, Ben’s dark eyes never left her face, his own pale as death. Surprisingly soft-looking, raven-dark hair fell nearly to his shoulders, easily hiding large ears Rey remembered from the photos. The black waves also swept forward and over the right side of his face, as if they’d been intentionally arranged that way to cover something else. Behind it, Rey could just make out the start of a collection of long, dark scars and mottled skin starting above his brow and raking down across his cheek before continuing along his neck into the dull grey prisoner uniform: the permanent imprint of wounds he’d sustained in his final stand against the First Order, Padmé had told her.

The long shape of the face she _could_ see -- the clean-shaven, slender profile, slightly odd curve of his mouth, strong, crooked nose (definitely Han’s) and full lips --  would have seemed almost young, almost sensitive, almost, dare she say it, _striking_ in a subtle, unconventional sort of way that crept up on her slowly... were it not for the exhausted charcoal-dark half-circles hanging beneath his eyes, the almost wounded way in which his head hung forward ever-so-slightly, and indescribably powerful, aching loneliness that could only be his, radiating through the Force clear through the transparisteel and uncomfortably resonating fundamentally with something painfully similar at Rey’s own core. Combined, it gave Ben the air of someone decades older, someone who’d been deprived entirely of sunlight and of anything that gave life joy.

His expression was unreadable, but it was immediately apparent it was _not_ one of overt welcoming.

But all Rey could think about were the pictures Padmé kept in her study:

Of a tiny boy with a toothy smile proudly holding up a scroll of childish yet elegant calligraphy.

Padmé holding in her lap the same small boy, though he was slightly older now with sad eyes, a similarly hanging head and a diminished, tired smile.

Padmé with her arms around a somber beanpole of a teenager who wasn’t even trying to smile, shoulders hunched, face turned away slightly and hardened eyes looking downward rather than toward the camera, as if trying to make himself smaller in order to hide from it.

She remembered, with perfect clarity, the palpable longing laced at times with such pain in the beautifully scripted message Ben kept repeating in some form in every letter he sent to his grandmother.

 _I miss you more than anything. I wish I was home. I always wish I was home._

Those words took on new meaning now, seeing the man who cared so much about Padmé confined like this, and experiencing for herself the constriction of this cold, lifeless place without daylight or moonlight or green things, where people were shackled to chairs for simple conversations and were referred to as numbers rather than names.

She might not have been Padmé, but she could still share with him a piece of Varykino in the time she was here. That was what Padmé would do, wasn’t it?

Resolved, though now with a vastly different purpose than when she’d entered, Rey met Ben’s still-fixed gaze straight on. Immediately, he twitched slightly and blinked, as if he was startled by this, but still, she offered him her kindest, warmest smile.

“Hello,” she said brightly.

Ben didn’t move.

Then, his brows raised ever-so-slightly, the corners of his eyes crinkling just a bit, as if baffled. Cautiously, he turned his head to look behind him, like he expected to see one of the correction officers standing just there who she was addressing rather than him. There was almost something sad about it, until his gaze snapped back to hers, narrowed and combative.

“Are you lost, little girl?” he asked harshly. His voice was a low, croaky rasp, as if he hadn’t used it properly in months.  

Rey’s eyebrows flew up in surprise. “I’m… sorry?”

“Either lost or imbecilic,” Ben revised scornfully, “because whoever you believe me to be, you have the _wrong person.”_

Oh R’iia be damned, he sounded _exactly_ like the pugnacious, condescending poodoo she’d never quite stopped imagining him as being.

Rey narrowly restrained herself from burying her forehead in her palms. “Right, a few things. First, I am twenty-one and well into womanhood, thank you,” she said, unable to stop irritation from flickering into her voice, “and secondly, no, Ben Solo, I’m neither lost _nor_ imbecilic. I’m here because your grandmother isn’t feeling well. She asked me to keep her appointment to see you instead.”

“My grandmother… asked _you_ to see me,” Ben repeated slowly, quiet tone simmering with something she couldn’t quite read.

His eyes flicked over Rey slowly, up and down; unlike the skugs who’d attacked her last night, this appeared more assessing than leering. Then his eyes widened with something like recognition, and his voice abruptly ballooned in volume, speed and anger. “You’re saying she is _sick enough_ that a total stranger wearing my grandmother’s _own_ _gods-damned clothing_ was sent in her place, and I’m stuck in this _medieval_ piece of equipment unable to do a _single kriffing thing about it?”_

With a snarl that screamed of frustration, he wrenched violently against the restraints binding him, and was so tall and powerfully built that some part of her was honestly surprised when they didn’t give an inch.

Behind him, the taller, leaner of the two correction officers, one with brown hair and brilliant green eyes, flipped around his Z6 riot baton and lifted it with a _snap_. White electricity abruptly sizzled between the conductor contact vanes along the end.

Though his visible anger never abated, Ben flinched ever-so-slightly from his eyes to his hands at the small but audible sound of the unfurling weapon.

Rey sprung to her feet, hastily holding up a hand and forcibly restraining her powerful instinct to _suggest_. “No, thank you, that _really_ isn’t necessary—“  

Ignoring her completely, the officer stepped forward and shoved the crackling device directly into the back of the chair holding Ben, as if there was a gaping hole in the metal there for this very purpose. Instantly, Ben’s body spasmed at the jolt of electricity, and Rey’s hands flew to her mouth, her eyes wide and horrified, as he let out a sharp but soft grunt of pain, as if he was restraining the sound through gritted teeth.

This was unnecessary. This was unnecessary. This was _so bloody unnecessary--_

The shock left Ben limp, as if he’d actually gone unconscious. His head hung downward bonelessly, dark hair cascading forward over his face, shoulders slumped against the band across his chest.

“Cause trouble, you get punished, but you already know that like a song, don’t you, Sithspawn?” the guard taunted in fluent Mando'a rather than the common Alliance Basic tongue. It was quite clear he didn’t expect Rey to understand it.

A chill crept down her spine. _Damn. Mandalorian._ ** _Again._**

The Mandalorian’s striking green eyes were filled with contempt, and his lip had curled back in the smallest of aggressive sneers that actually concerned her slightly given his current position of authority. Of course they’d assign an officer of a race that apparently had some inbred Force suggestion resistance to a Force-sensitive individual, even if Ben’s access to the Force was _already suppressed._

She stiffened when he turned his attention to her and gestured downward once, sharply. “You. Sit,” he barked in stilted, heavily accented Alliance Basic.

Rey’s eyebrows flew up in surprise, her forcefully lifted chin recoiling slightly. She glanced momentarily at the second officer, still standing at attention beside the door, but he was simply looking on with detached interest, his baby face visibly bored.

Apparently, the Central Detention Center’s warm welcome of the Queen of Naboo’s representative stopped dead in this small, sterile room.

It took every ounce of control Rey possessed to fling the Mandalorian officer anything but an expression of pure venom. Forcing herself to breathe, _breathe_ through her anger, she instead gave him a strained, insincere smile that was more of a brief stretch of tightly-pressed lips, and stiffly sank back into her chair.

Across the transparisteel divider, Ben’s body wracked with a single shudder. Then, slowly, his long fingers curled around the ends of the chair’s arms, gripping them tightly. The same slightly darker mottling of burned skin that had been incrementally visible on the right half of his face, Rey noticed, covered the top of his right hand as well.

Heavily, his head lifted only slightly, as if it weighed significantly more than it had minutes ago. He scowled up at Rey from beneath his now-disheveled fringe of black hair, dark eyes smoldering.

“Thanks… so much,” he breathed lowly, gravelly voice sarcastic.

Rey’s lips parted. Her head jerked backward, astonished. “What— You’re blaming me for that? I asked him to stop!” _Stars,_ but he was making it _so_ very easy to negate any sorriness she might have felt for him! “Why did you go off like she’s bloody well dying, which she _isn’t,_ before I could fully explain?” She flung her hand at the now-stationary guards. “Especially if you knew _that_ was going to happen!”

“Explain? As if you would have cared enough to even bother,” Ben shot back though in a soft hiss.

“You don’t know me; of course I would have, she’s your grandmother!”

A sharp, irate expression crossed the Mandalorian officer’s face, and Rey gritted her teeth, forcing herself to keep her voice low as well. “I’m sorry I _offended_ you by simply wearing the clothing your grandmother all but forced on me, but I’m not ungrateful to her in the slightest for doing it.”

“Why would—” the swiftest of pained grimaces crossed his face as he finally straightened fully, “—she give you her old clothing? Not even m--” for a moment, his voice hitched and stumbled, “--her _daughter_ had the chance to wear some of those things. How do I know you didn’t steal them?” he accused.

In a heartbeat, every single one of Rey’s good intentions for this conversation flew right out the nearest nonexistent window.

“I didn’t _steal_  them, you stuck-up, presumptuous bantha brain! I don’t make a habit of _stealing_ things out of the closets of people who are kind to me!” she hissed with the furor of an enraged mongoose. “And even if I had, do you think I’d be stupid enough to wear them in front of someone who’d likely recognize it?”

He blinked. “So you’re implying that if she _hadn’t_ been kind—“

Rey held back a groan; of course he would have picked up on that. She tried not to think about the few survival items she’d borrowed with no intent to return before leaving her worst foster home, out of necessity. And perhaps the teeniest bit of spite.

“Will you stop when there is nothing to this?” she ground out. “Your grandmother told me nothing I had was warm enough for Coruscant. I had one night to pack my bag, so I couldn’t exactly go shopping for anything else. Clearly this switch was extremely last-minute and I wish to the Force it hadn’t been; maybe then some advanced notice could have prevented your _electrocution.”_

“I’ve had worse,” he snarled back, abruptly reminding Rey of the razor-teethed, feral massiffs that had wandered the outskirts of Niima after escaping from or being abandoned by their handlers.

She stared at him in disbelief. “That doesn’t mean you should have to endure that more than necessary!”

“As if you care,” he hurled back, for a second time. “The wretched Kylo Ren, brought low by a cattle prod; that isn’t something the general public gets to see every day. I’m sure that was satisfying for you to watch. How much will the tabloids pay for that little detail about my sentence, I wonder?”

Rey saw red.

“Don’t you dare put words in my mouth!” she exclaimed furiously, and struggled to keep her volume from exploding. “I don’t give a damn who you were before, I’d _never_ sell someone’s secrets to any of that artificial filth, and I’m not a bloody sadist, you pugnacious moof-milker!”

Briefly, she pressed her fingers over closed eyes. Stars, this _man;_ this moonbrained, infuriating, stubborn…

With a deep exhale, she dropped her hands and evenly met Ben’s wide-eyed, half-savage expression. “Right. I didn’t come here to fight, and I’m certain your grandmother didn’t envision things going this way, either. She’s not as terribly sick as it appears you’re imagining, she’s just getting over a particularly nasty illness and didn’t feel up to a multi-day cross-country trip. It took her almost a week of agonizing to make that decision, by the way,” she added techily.  

Glancing down, Rey pulled out the folded letter she’d tucked into her belt -- the only personal item that was not clothing she hadn’t been made to leave at the security station. “She wanted me to show you this.”

She broke the wax seal, opened up the thick, cream-colored paper and pressed it flat against the transparisteel. This letter, Padmé had carefully written herself, despite trembling hands that had made the resulting message very nearly illegible.

Ben stretched his head forward an inch, the only motion his restraints would allow, and squinted at the letter. After a few seconds, he glowered at Rey and bit out caustically, “I’m so sorry to report that, along with the Force, the collar I’m wearing appears to have suppressed my _telephoto vision.”_

Rey drew in a long, slow breath, praying for patience. “Right. I had planned to read it to you. I simply wanted to make it very clear that she wrote it herself, not me.” In her vexation, she over-enunciated every word. “Do you deem that _acceptable?”_

Ben’s eyes snapped back to her face. Surprise — pure, considerable, and obvious — flashed openly across his own. “You’re… R.”

Rey blinked at him, equally surprised he’d only just realized that. Still, it was the first time he’d shown her anything other than hostility, and the lack of aggression somehow managed to change everything about him, from the dark cloud of energy radiating from him to even his physical appearance.

That it was because he recognized _her_ name felt… promising, somehow. As if they might just get through Ben’s surface-level pigheadedness to the intensely private but not entirely unkind individual beneath it who wrote with such emotion and openness to his grandmother.

A little — only a little — of the protective wall Rey had erected around herself lowered.

She lifted her hands slightly, as if to say, ‘here I am,’ and risked a small, tentative smile. “One and the same.”

A beat of silence. _“You’re_ from the Western Reaches.”

She stiffened, suddenly feeling strangely defensive of the fact that she was. “Yes. Jakku.”

“Jakku,” Ben repeated, his lip curling slightly in clear disgust. “Yet your accent is perfect high Coruscanti.”

Rey glared at him. A fierce desire to _not_ be the party responsible for hammering the final hole in the coffin of these pseudo peace talks spurred her to bite out, “One of my…” she hawed over the word, “ _caretakers—“_ not an accurate description, but she was not about to get into her wreck of a childhood with this man— “used it when I was younger. I liked how it sounded, so I made it mine. Not that I owe you an explanation.”

“Hm.” A pensive but non-belligerent expression crossed his face. Then his voice twisted sardonically. “So. You’re the girl— _woman_ I’ve had no choice but to hear so much about.”

Rey frowned irritably at him; her reply held equal sarcasm. “No need to sound so self-righteous about it. It hasn’t exactly been easy dealing with you either.”

“Dealing with me.”

“Yes, dealing with you.” If he wanted to go there, _oh,_ she was more than willing. “You, Ben Solo, have been nothing but a bully and a snob to me from Day One, when all I have _ever_ wanted was to help and support your grandmother, and you bloody well know it.”

Ben’s jaw visibly tightened, and he looked as though he had been forced to swallow something deeply unpleasant. “Know what? That all you’ve ever wanted was to help and support my grandmother? No, I haven’t known that. Yes, she might have mentioned it, but perception and reality can be very different things, and I don’t know who you are at all. For all I knew, you were a random Hutt _kung_ who crawled out of the dirtball backalleys of the Western Reaches and was cozying up to a wealthy, open-hearted older woman to do Force knew what when you had your chance. If you truly do care for my grandmother, can you blame me for wanting you gone before that happened?”

“Do you really think that Padmé Amidala, beloved Queen and legendary politician, wouldn’t have sussed out my sinister plans by now if I had any? Of course she could have,” Rey snapped, even though she couldn’t say she wouldn’t have felt the same were she in his place. “She may not be Force-sensitive like you are, but she’s more intuitive than you give her credit for!”

They both glowered at each other, Rey’s arms crossed, Ben’s frankly massive hands gripping the armrests in front of him so tightly she thought he might actually manage to crush the thick metal. At a basic level, she recognized that when he was speaking like a normal person and wasn’t snarling and spitting, he actually sounded rather reasonable, but she couldn’t quite get past the sting of his prejudice when it extended to her, or rather his version of her nefarious counterpart.

“I know my grandmother is very capable,” Ben ground out after a moment. “But I am also all too familiar with the vile creatures that haunt this world and would wish her harm due only to her connection to me. And I am stuck _here_ and unable to stop it.”

“I know a thing or two about them, too. Western Reaches, remember? We’re all thieving, leeching, good-for-nothing delinquents there, if I recall correctly,” she spat acidly before she could stop herself.

When his head recoiled minutely, as if she’d slapped him, Rey hauled in a breath and forced her spiraling temper to stop -- _stop_.

Briefly, she massaged the growing ache at her forehead. “Ben, you aren’t the only one who’s looking out for her, you know that, don’t you? There’s an army of people who love her and would do anything for her.” She gestured at the heavy circles beneath his eyes. “So maybe go a bit easier on yourself about an unfortunate situation you can’t control, and you might actually be able to get some sleep at night.”

To her surprise, Ben simply stared at her, mouth slightly slack, the slightest furrow between his brows that she noted oddly made him look more confused than angry. 

His gaze lowered toward the arm of the chair holding him. “Be that as it may, I still don’t even know your name,” he said quietly. “Is it R? Do they only name by initial in whatever underdeveloped desert outpost you come from?”

Well, now that every security guard in the Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center knew who she was, where she was from, every job she’d held in the last four years, and the nickname of her teenage self’s pet parrot for good measure, she decided her original attempt at anonymity had all but gone to hell, anyway.

“Rey,” she said with a sigh. His dark eyes snapped back to hers. “My name is Rey. With an ‘e’.”

“Rey with an ‘e’ what?” he pressed softly.

Oh, Rey knew he was going to _love_ this. “Rey Random.”  

Ben’s lips parted. “Rey _Random?_ Is that some kind of joke?” At her defiant gaze, he huffed a disbelieving breath of air that in another world with another person might have passed for a laugh. “Son of a half-blinded bantha. And you both wonder why I didn't trust you.”

“No need to be jealous my name sounds more like a superhero than yours does,” she shot back.

His eyes narrowed assessingly. “If it even is your real name. No one except crime lords keeps records in Jakku. Any reputable private investigator would have known enough to take anything in your history with a grain of salt. Or, should I say, _sand.”_

Rey’s ire surged forward like a flame; she gripped the chair arms to keep from leaping to her feet in anger. “You presumptuous bastard,” she hissed. “Not all of us are so fortunate to be born with a traceable royal lineage stretching back centuries. That has been my last name since my parents abandoned me outside a junkyard when I was three, and the asshole who found me there decided it'd be _amusing,_ so that’s what he wrote on my foster papers. Again, not that it’s any of your bloody business.”

She was shaking -- actually shaking with fury. Oh _R’iia,_ it took a special kind of someone to get her this unspeakably angry, but she was aiming to do damage now, and she felt a fierce stab of satisfaction when Ben’s permanently suspicious, contumely expression froze.

“And,” she added heatedly, “if you intend to wrongly assume anything else about me, I’d much rather you pissed off.”

She forcefully crossed her arms and sat back, fuming, beyond astonished when another scathing retort didn’t immediately follow. She hated him. She _hated_ him. By the Force, this entire conversation was a bloody disaster; how had Padmé _ever_ thought this would--

“Why didn't you change it?” Ben asked quietly.

“What?” Rey snapped, still expecting a fight.

“You're not three anymore. Why haven't you changed your last name?”

His soft-spoken tone had inexplicably dropped back to non-aggressive and conversational. Like _whiplash_.

Rey’s brow furrowed in confusion, hackles still raised. Then she processed his question, and her brow furrowed deeper still. No one had ever asked her that before, nor had she once contemplated the idea.

“Because I've lived with it for as long as I can remember,” she said eventually, and the words felt _right,_ in spite of who she was saying them to. “It's gone to hell and back with me. It's _mine_ now, no matter how rude some people--” a pointed look “-- can be about it, and I've grown rather fond of it.” She pulled one leg up to her chest and wrapped her arms around it, setting her chin on the top of her knee; it was comforting, inelegant as the position may have seemed. “And because I still think it makes me sound like a secret superhero.”

Ben just stared at her. Again.

 _Stars,_ she wished she could reach into his big, moonbrained head and pluck out a fraction - a hint! - of what he was thinking, of whatever was behind his bloody _exhausting_ temperament swings and the unreadable intensity in his gaze. But even with the Suppression Collar, she feared that he of all people would instantly sense and recognize exactly what she was doing, and, worst-case scenario, blurt out _something_ that would tell the whole damn world (or at least the two correctional officers who for the moment may as well have been) that Rey Random was a Force-sensitive like he was.  

Before Rey could suggest something witty but juvenile about taking a picture, it lasted longer -- because being around Ben Solo apparently turned her as her childish and truculent as he was -- Ben spoke slowly, sounding legitimately bewildered by what he was verbalizing.

“You’re not… _afraid_ of me.”

As if the very idea of it was inconceivable to him.

Rey automatically opened her mouth to snap, _‘You aren’t nearly as scary as you’d like to believe,’_ but a strange hesitance in his voice stilled the fully loaded, bellicose response.

She focused sharply on him, but he was too busy scanning her face in astonishment to notice, as if she were an alien species he’d never before encountered and wanted to painstakingly document as quickly as possible in case he never had the chance again.

When their eyes did meet, he swiftly looked away, suddenly avoiding rather than challenging her gaze. There was something vulnerable about it that was new to their exchange, and it struck her, then, truly struck her:

 _No one but his grandmother -- and now,_ **_her_ ** _\-- knew Ben at all._

Not the wall of bluster or the unstable Force-sensitive or the haunting specter called Kylo Ren -- though that wasn’t to say he wasn’t those things as well. But the person who’d been so proud of the advanced rocking chair he’d built in his intro-level carpentry class that had taken him _weeks_ of bullheaded determination to construct correctly; who had a soft spot for loth-cats, little monsters that Rey herself found them to be; and who shared happy, loving childhood memories with his grandmother biweekly.

Padmé had always been saying something to this effect, but this was the first time exactly what that _meant_ sunk into Rey’s bones. It was almost impossible to imagine that he had never encountered a single other person in his lifetime who didn’t instantly see him as someone to be feared. R’iia’s breath, how awful, how _lonely_ must a life like that have been?

In a single exhale, her anger toward him drained from her body. A deep compassion took its place.

“How’s the training going?” she answered him by asking, honestly curious to know the answer. “With your latest rescue. Fido.”

“Millie,” Ben bit out sharply, pale cheeks flushing pink from anger.

It was the first he’d ever relayed the dog’s name. “Millie, then.”

Ben seemed visibly thrown by her change of topic. His jaw tightened. Tautly, he bit out, “Is this some backward way of--”

 _“No,”_ Rey interrupted before he could fall back into attack mode. Force be good, was _no_ topic safe from his suspicion and distrust? “No, I’d really like to know. As you may recall, I did offer some advice about it when you first got her.” She tried to say it with as little cheek as possible, but it was hard not to come off that way anyway.

“Advice. Is that what they’re calling provocations these days.”

She rolled her eyes. “If you had any sense of humor, you’d know my follow up was obviously meant to be funny. I bet what I said about her abandonment issues was helpful.”

Ben was silent long enough that she began to doubt he’d respond. Then, jaw momentarily working in discomfort, he said tonelessly, “She was adopted two weeks ago.”

Her own knowledge of just how difficult it could be for some animals to get adopted, especially poorly behaved ones, spurred the automatic jubilation that surged through her.  “Ben, that’s wonderful!” she exclaimed, grinning enthusiastically. When he met her excitement with a stony expression, she hesitated. “Isn’t it?”

He shrugged listlessly, staring dully at the intersection of the floating counter and the transparisteel. Rey scanned his drawn features, and suddenly recognized that it wasn’t apathy in them, but _sadness._

“You miss her,” she realized, eyes going wide at the reveal of this new, palpably human facet of him.

His lips pressed together tightly. To Rey’s shock, emotion suddenly glistened in his eyes, the shine of it bright and unmistakable. Immediately, he blinked rapidly, still looking away; the knuckles on the hands that gripped the ends of the chair arms had turned white.

Stars. _This_... this soft and -- inconceivably -- _sensitive_ part of him that he was desperately trying to hide from her was _finally_ getting closer, Rey suspected, to the man who Padmé knew and loved, who the older woman often referred to as a sweet lamb as if there wasn't a full-sized Doberman Pinscher stuffed in there as well, smiling with immeasurable fondness. (Ben would probably die if he knew she knew that.)  

That she, too, was now witnessing it -- that Ben Solo was finally trusting her enough to give her this -- loosened something further inside her.

With a long, slow breath of release and relief, she shook her head sympathetically. “I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been. To train her for so long and then have to give her up? I worked at a shelter for a few months, and it was difficult enough leaving animals I only had more superficial relationships with at the end of the day.” As she’d been speaking, Ben had looked back at her warily, as if unsure of where she was going with this and what it would mean for him. “Do you know anything about the family who adopted her?”

Another pause. Then he looked down again and shook his head, the motion so small it was hardly perceptible. This time, Rey sensed the overt misery clouded around him.

“Oh, I’m sorry. It’s always reassuring to know without a doubt they were decent people,” she said, and meant it. “Though I’m sure they must have been, if they thought she was special.”

After another moment of silence in which finally he didn’t _fight_ her on anything and even the very energy around him seemed more settled, Rey felt the situation had stabilized enough to say, “No, Ben. I’m not afraid of you. Not when _this_ is more who you really are.”

Ben’s tightly clenched fingers seemed to spasm.

“Is it?” he asked, sounding surprised. His penetrating gaze pierced hers once more, searching her eyes. At her startled expression, he rumbled again, “Oh, _is_ it _.”_ His voice was low. “Spent enough time listening to my grandmother’s biased stories of me and looking at my baby pictures to think you’ve got a full grasp of my character?”

Rey’s jaw dropped. Back to character attacks and accusations for no reason whatsoever now, were they? Force, what had she done? Simply been too bloody _nice?_

The all-too-familiar prickle of heated anger, and maybe a little embarrassment, crept across her neck, but Rey was determined not to sink to his level of regression... and didn’t want to give him the pleasure of admitting there was some truth to what he’d said, either.

She crossed her arms and glared across the room at the Z6 baton in the hands of the motionless second guard.

But of _course,_ Ben had to go and push her.

“Tell me, then: What am I?” he challenged.

This couldn’t be happening. Sweet _mother_ of R’iia, ****what in the name of the sixteen kingdoms had she done to deserve this?

“I’m just a good-for-nothing nobody from Jakku; why would you care what I think?” she flung back, turning her glare on him.

His jaw visibly tightened. “Since you clearly remember my original views on you, it’s only fair you return the courtesy. It’s obvious you have an opinion.” There was an odd, almost morbid sort of curiosity in his otherwise clenched, hard expression. “Say it.”

Oh, damn it all, Rey knew exactly what she wanted to say, and she knew just as well that Padmé would be utterly disappointed in her lack of kindness and restraint if she did. Then again, hadn’t Padmé once told Rey not to feel uncomfortable sharing her wonderful personality with Ben if she felt so inspired? It wasn’t as if Rey planned to tell him anything _mean_. It just felt like… truth.

As if he sensed she was on the edge, Ben repeated softly, eyes glistening, _“Say it.”_

In that moment, it sounded less like an order than it did a plea.

And Rey felt _inspired._

“All right. You want to know what I think of you? _Happy_ to oblige.” She unfurled herself from the chair and shoved herself forward, elbows on the floating counter, like she was racing headlong into battle. “You’re someone,” she said, poking a finger at him that collided with the transparisteel, “who wants to be loved and accepted _so much_ , by anyone, that you’d give the one person who does the full breadth and depth of the admirably immense loyalty you possess. You’d even give up your entire _life_ to save them, and very nearly did.”

Ben had gone utterly still, lips parted slightly, staring into her unyielding, determined gaze as if he was frozen there. And if she thought about it, fully, properly, Rey might have stopped there, but there was something about Ben Solo that made blunt words spill stupidly from her mouth without judicious thought.

“You love taking care of stray animals,” she continued with all the confidence and knowing of someone who _deeply understood,_ “because you feel like one yourself, and wish to the Force someone else would notice you wandering unwanted on the side of the road and care enough about you to do the same. And your surname is about as descriptively apt for you as mine is me. Because of the Force, you’ve been isolated your entire life. No one else understood it, they only feared it, and, by extension, you.” _Stars,_ she may as well have been talking about herself this whole time. “I suspect you only thought to ask me why I haven’t changed my name because you dearly wish you could shed yours -- that to the rest of the world, you could become as anonymous as a nobody like me.”

The wan skin of Ben’s face was ashen now, his expression stunned. Still, Rey pressed on, “Although I haven’t _quite_ figured out why you’re so bloody afraid of letting _anyone_ beside your grandmother see your redeeming qualities that you _bluster_ and attack and _rage_ at virtually everyone else like a complete and utter bantha’s arse!”

Stopping abruptly, she sucked in a short gasp of air and collapsed against the back of the chair. Adrenaline raced through her blood.

Aside from the thud of her pulse in her ears, the silence that followed was deafening. Even the two correction officers at the door were staring at her, open-mouthed.

Ben’s eyes were swimming now, so much emotion welled in them, swirling like a maelstrom across the entirety of his face, that it was almost impossible to distinguish or identify any of it. His chin wavered abruptly, and he bit down on the side of his cheek hard, ripping his gaze from hers. His chest heaved and shuddered as if he’d just finished a marathon.

Cold regret abruptly washed over her for the blunt harshness of the words she’d chosen.

She didn’t for a moment question her assumptions, and could tell from his reaction alone that she hadn’t been wrong. Her mistake had been in assuming this seemingly cold, closed fortress of a man, this notorious First Order -- top-level henchman? assassin? -- was prepared to take it; after all, he’d all but demanded it himself.

But now she could see he wasn’t. R’iia’s breath, he so very clearly wasn’t.

Rey briefly cradled her forehead in her hand. “Ben--”

 _“Get. Out,”_ he rasped harshly. 

Her gaze shot to him, shocked.

She all but recoiled from the force of the hatred projecting from his glazed eyes, _radiating_ from his rigid body.

Her lips floundered slightly. “But… But you… _you_ asked me to--”

“ _Leave. Me. Alone,”_ Ben gritted out slowly, deliberately, voice shaking with rage. Despite everything he’d said and done since she’d arrived, this abrupt rejection was still unexpected, and, Force be good -- it _stung,_ even though what she’d said to him had certainly been _no worse_ than any of the things he’d said to her. Even without the Suppression collar, she could feel the strength of his whirling emotions in the Force like a wave of icy fire. “Tell my grandmother I never want to see you. If she isn’t feeling well in the future, I would much rather _no one_ came than you. Get out.” When she didn’t immediately move, he shouted, “Get out!”

He seemed to realize at the exact same time she did what he’d just done.

He sucked a sharp, soft breath and flinched visibly, eyes squeezing shut and hands gripping the armrests as if he were bracing himself. Rey swiftly glanced toward the guards, eyes wide with dread.

But they must have been feeling generous, or perhaps enjoyed watching as Ben was humiliated in a different way, because while both were looking their way with clear detestation, eyes narrowed, their shock batons remained blessedly off.

Still, that -- that momentary pause was enough to ground Rey before her temper flared again, enough to remind her of the terrible, abusive conditions in which this man was imprisoned, like a caged bird of prey, wings permanently clipped when it had always been meant to fly free. If she thought about it, it was little wonder he was so defensive.  

She let out a long breath. “Ben, look… I’m sorry my words upset you. I didn’t think…”

But she _had_ , hadn’t she. Hadn’t she been waiting for almost a year to give Padmé’s grandson a piece of her mind?

She held up Padmé’s letter, grasping at the last threads of this horrifically unraveling encounter. “Don’t you want to hear what your grandmother wrote before I go?”

Like a gathering storm, his dark eyes flashed up to hers. “Oh, of course I’d _like_ to hear it,” he snarled. “Although I’ve all but given up on the idea that you’d be so kind as to _stop_ _talking_ long enough to share it with me.”

Rey stilled.

The attack was blatant and it was mean, plain and simple. Ben’s face was as ferocious as it had been after she’d first stepped inside the visitation room, like the progress they’d made in between hadn’t happened at all, and she knew then, just knew, that if he was going to go this way, if he wanted her gone, then there was really nothing more she could do here.

If he didn’t find her worthy enough to give her a fraction of respect he showed his grandmother, the respect she _knew_ he was capable of, then he wasn’t worthy of her patience or her tolerance, either. It was sad, and disappointing, and Padmé was going to be so upset, but… it was what it was.

Rey had already tolerated more rubbish in fifteen minutes with Ben than she had from almost anyone else in years.

She sighed and nodded to herself. “You’re right.” She folded the letter away. “I’d better go.”

 _Stars,_ she wished she didn’t have to go through the Mandalorian corrections officer to get in touch with Captain Phasma. Perhaps the second officer would be nicer...  


As she pushed her chair back, she felt more than saw Ben’s gaze snap to her face.

“Running away at the first sign of difficulty,” he spat venomously. “What a surprise.”

Rey stopped halfway to her feet to stare at him in disbelief. “Excuse me? I believe that only a moment ago you all but threw me out of the room yourself.”

“Funny, you don’t strike me as someone who always listens to what their _betters_ tell them,” Ben flung back spitefully through gritted teeth.

Well, if _that_ didn’t solidify her decision.

“I signed up to visit you, but I didn’t sign up to be verbally attacked for no good reason,” she replied evenly. “I will admit the bantha’s arse comment may have been out of line, but I am _trying_ to be nice, and you are not. And I’m certainly not staying if you don’t want me to be here.” She refolded Padmé’s letter and held it up before tucking it back in her belt. “I’ll leave this at the front. I’m sure they’ll get it to you; you can read it yourself later.”

As Rey stood, Ben let out a harsh, humorless bark of laughter that wasn’t for a moment a laugh. “How _ironic_ that you yourself wondered why I don’t let anyone see ‘my redeeming qualities’,” he sneered contemptuously, twisting her words.  

She paused, then turned back around, narrowing her eyes at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

There was a slight tremble to the oversized hands clutching the metal arms of the chair across from her, but his energy was so chaotic that whether it was from fury or anything else, it was hard to say.

“Because,” Ben snarled matter-of-factly, “they _always leave_ _anyway.”_

Rey froze.

His bitter words, and a hail of memories, struck her right in the chest.  

Her parents, appearances fuzzy and blurred, walking away from her on a blue-skied, bright, dusty day, a giant, foul hand holding her back as she screamed and screamed for them to come back.

The one semi-kind family that had taken her in driving away from her because they were moving to Jedha and couldn’t afford to take her with them, leaving her alone on the streets of Niima Outpost with a bag of trail mix bars and a few bottles of water.

The lone child services officer in all of Jakku’s eastern regions that had left Rey on the doorstep of a monster, even though Rey had immediately sensed that this was _not a place she should stay_ and had begged to be given to anyone else.

Sweet, loyal Finn kissing her cheek in parting on the day he struck out from Varykino on his own way and getting into the taxi that would take him to the nearest bus station and the busy, exciting cities of the eastern coast.

But while the misery of a seemingly never-ending parade of abandonments had left Rey more understanding of the suffering of others, more open and more compassionate, it had turned Ben into a savage, paranoid, broken shell of who he’d once been -- of who he _could_ be.

A shell that she, too, was now leaving, just as she herself had always been left.

Rey nearly groaned; wanted to bury her face in her hands.

Instead, she briefly closed her eyes. Carefully, _ever_ so carefully, she reached out through the Force between them. She avoided going near his mind -- anywhere that could trigger a realization of what she was doing --  and focused on the turbulent energy of bitterness and hatred encircled as tightly around his chest as the metal band restraining him there.

It took but a small poke beneath those surface emotions --  barely trying, really -- for Rey to instantly encounter a galaxy of hurt and pain.

The strength of it nearly took her breath from her. Stars, there was _so much_ pain, and fear, and sadness and _aching loneliness_ right behind his facade of rage that simply peering at it felt like she was standing on the edge of an abyss for which there might be no bottom at all. She still sensed the loathing she’d felt on the surface, too, but now she could see it wasn’t directed at her... it was aimed entirely at _himself._

It triggered a memory of something Padmé had once told her, when this had all started so many months ago:

_Even Ben, for all his seeming aloofness, wants deeply to know and be known._

And… and that was true, wasn’t it? If it wasn’t, Ben could have simply sat back smugly and let Rey go without a fuss when she’d actually acquiesced to his order she leave. But instead, he’d continued to engage her and himself made the connection back to her earlier question, voluntarily revealing something deeply vulnerable about himself, even though he had flung it at her with vitriol.

She couldn’t help but think again of the feral massiffs that clung to the outskirts of the Western Reaches’ desert outposts, so often starving or beaten or injured — always potentially dangerous and the first to lash out when they were hurting, but at the same time, in desperate need of help.

Even though Rey had _felt_ for them, and had often tried to help them whenever the situation was safe enough for her to do it, it didn’t mean that she would allow herself to be bit or torn apart in the process, either. 

Gripping Padmé’s letter tightly, she slowly sat back down.

This single action seemed to off-balance the rancorous man across from her more than if she’d snarled back at him and slapped him across the face.

A small furrow appeared at the center of Ben’s brow. He stared at her warily, shifting uncomfortably in his restraints. “What. What are you doing.”

The half-feral words were more demand than question, but Rey had a few demands of her own.

She met his gaze evenly. “Not leaving.”

Ben stared at her. His mouth opened, closed, and then his skittish, distrustful stare lowered, focusing on the line where the transparisteel met the counter. Roughly, he bit out, “If this is some form of _misplaced pity,_ I’d much rather you did.”

Of course he would take her kindness the most difficult way possible. “Not pity. Empathy. There’s a difference,” Rey said. With a lift of her chin, she leaned toward him, her expression steely and determined. “Now, you listen to me, Ben Solo, because I will say this _only once._ I refuse to tolerate anyone who speaks to me with disrespect. I’ve dealt with--”

“Holy mother of _Kwath,_ you two are like a fraggin’ alpha pair of mating anoobas,” the second, round-faced guard abruptly spat out in an accent Rey vaguely recognized as a Hosnian dialect. He sounded disgusted. “I’d say get a room, but you’ve only got fifteen minutes left in this one. Fifteen _minutes.”_

Rey bristled.

Ben’s pale face flushed bright red.

“...as I was saying,” she bit out after a moment, “I’ve dealt with enough disrespect in my life already, thanks, and I have no _intention_ of taking it from anyone ever again. If you attack or insult me again when I have done nothing to warrant it, except be from Jakku and not let you steamroll over me, apparently, I give you my word I will walk out this door and never come back. But I care about your grandmother, and she wanted me to deliver her letter to you in person. If you care about her, too, which you so obviously do, then you’ll be civil enough back for me to at least do that.”

Ben continued to stare at the intersection of transparisteel and counter like he was trying to break it, hands gripping the armrests, jaw visibly clenched.

He said nothing.

So Rey waited.

After several seconds, something in him seemed to deflate slightly, the shift small and tired. “I… accept your terms,” he murmured, all aggression drained from his voice. As he continued to stare downward, his jaw momentarily worked uncomfortably, and he added lowly, “And… apologize. For how I spoke to you. It was crude and… undeserved.”  

Rey blinked.

That… That was more than she had _ever_ expected.

She was so astonished that she completely forgot what she had planned to do next. She certainly hadn’t fully entertained as a real possibility that Ben would actually drop his antagonistic moonbrainedness enough for them to continue, let alone entirely.

She still didn’t entirely trust that he had.

“Okay… _Okay,”_ she breathed, more to herself than to him, relaxing ever so slightly back into her seat.

She unfolded Padmé’s letter again, looking over the tremulous but carefully written hand. It abruptly disturbed her that both _sleemo_ guards hovering in the background -- clearly listening to everything they said -- were about to hear the older woman’s pure words of caring and love; Rey could clearly imagine them mocking Ben about it later.

She recalled the promise she’d made when she’d first entered this room to try to share with Ben a piece of Varykino while she was here.

Perhaps she still could.

In quick decision, she leaned toward the speaker embedded in the transparisteel, lowered her voice significantly, and, rather than in the Republic Basic it was written, read the first sentence in the more obscure language of Naboo.

_“ ‘My dear grandson.’ ”_

Before Ben went and ruined it by complaining that they’d also suppressed his _super hearing_ along with the Force and why in the hell was she reading in a different language, Rey paused, glanced back at him, and briefly but pointedly flicked her eyes toward the guards behind him.

Ben’s lips parted and brows lifted, eyes widening slightly in a way that suddenly made him look at least a decade younger, completely guileless, and not at all like himself — likely from shock that Rey _from Jakku_ could speak a second language, let along his heritage’s native tongue, she thought sardonically.

After several seconds, he shut his gaping mouth and nodded once, the motion so small it was nearly unnoticeable. Subtly, he pressed forward against the tight chest restraint, bowing his head and cocking the left side of it toward her, as if straining to get as physically near her as he could to listen closely.

For the first time that afternoon, Rey felt the smallest flicker of -- of true _camaraderie_ , as if their wavelengths were finally fully aligned. It was… nice.

Perhaps Ben hadn’t been lying about accepting her truce after all.

So, in a hushed voice that was hardly a whisper, she continued to translate Padmé’s letter to Naboo’s lyrical, flowing old language as she read it aloud.

 _“ ‘You know I wish more than anything I could be with you in person. I expect by now dear Rey has told you I am recovering from a new Nabooian late-summer flu… flu...’ ”_ Abruptly, she stumbled over the translation to Nabooian of a word she hadn’t yet needed to learn.

“Strain, strain...” she muttered to herself.

 _“Reisoleé,”_ Ben suddenly supplied softly in impeccable High Nabooian.

Rey looked up at him in surprise. He was still hunched toward her as best he could be, clearly listening closely, but his gaze had lifted slightly, coffee brown eyes on her.

“ ‘ _Reisoleé,’ ”_ Rey repeated just as quietly. For some reason, her heart quickened -- it must have been his stare, unnerving in its intensity, so she swiftly looked down and continued to translate, “ _‘not dissimilar to what you caught the last time you were here. I expect to be right as rain for our visit next quarter, love.’_

“ _‘And now you’ve had the opportunity to meet Rey.’_ Oh R’iia, here we go,” she muttered, feeling heat rush to her cheeks, “ _‘It has been a great comfort to me, not to mention a joy, to be supported by such an intelligent, gifted, and beautiful young woman as I continue into my silver years. In fact, she reminds me of myself at that age, in many ways. She has the heart of a Naberrie and the strength of an Amidala.’_ ”

Rey’s face was positively burning now, and she briefly pressed a hand over her eyes. “It’s awkward enough when she flatters me like this on paper, and now I’m actually reading it to your face,“ she groaned in Basic without looking at him, and quickly went on in the hopes of getting through this part quickly,

“ _‘I hope by now you have seen in her all the wonderful qualities I have, and more, and any lingering fears about her presence at Varykino have well been laid to rest. R, if they have not, please give him your best Senator Amidala glare._ ’ Oh, I’m sure they haven’t been,” Rey commented, desperately seizing on the opportunity to shift the focus back onto him.

Impishly, she obligingly schooled her face, then swiftly looked up at Ben with furrowed brows and a severe frown. Thank the _Force,_ he was already looking at her, and his head jerked back slightly, as if startled by either her harsh expression or the quickness with which she’d turned her gaze on him.

“Have they been laid to rest, young man?” Rey prompted in Alliance Basic in her best Strict Grandmother Padmé voice.

Ben blinked at her. After a few seconds, he said flatly, “Your Padmé Amidala isn’t nearly as good as your Naboo.”

At once, Rey felt profoundly young and foolish for her spontaneous flippancy; cheeks flushing again, she dropped the expression and wrinkled her nose at him sourly. “I’m well aware that your grandmother is irreplicable. I was trying to inject some levity, moonbrain.”

“I’m well aware of that,” he echoed dryly, and in a quiet murmur, added, “wrench-jockey.”

At the common slang for a repair bot, Rey wasn’t certain whether to be surprised or offended, until Ben’s eyes flicked to hers. There was something in them that was different, unexpected, almost... _lighter_. Like a cascade, it served to relax his entire facial features, pulling gently at the curve of his mouth.

To her incredulity, his lips twitched upward ever-so-slightly. For the first time, nearly -- almost -- a _smile_.

A curl of warmth unexpectedly coiled in her stomach that was very unlike the jolt of warning through the Force that usually pulled there.

Teasing. _He_ was teasing _her._

It seemed like a meteoric victory.

Rey leaned back and placed a hand over her heart. “Wrench-jockey? _Meesa?”_ she gasped in mock horror.

“Grandmother’s mentioned more than once you couldn’t stop fixing things, as I’m sure you know, since you wrote it.” He blinked, and then at once his faintly amused expression shifted; his voice tensed and tightened. “You’re not… trying to fix me?”

 _“Stars_ no, I wouldn’t even know where to start,” she scoffed before she could consider it. She slapped her hand over her mouth. “I… I mean…”

But Ben just _laughed._ It was only a small bark, but it sounded genuine, and he seemed as shocked by it as she was. Their eyes briefly met, and Rey’s breath caught at the hesitant spark of amazement and _life_ she found there.

It was… unexpected.

And nice, her mind supplied stupidly, again.

It was very, very nice.

She found herself grinning back at him, hers free and wide and open. With renewed enthusiasm, she turned back to translating Padmé’s next paragraph describing how a new artisan had taken up residence on the small island nearest Varykino, and how, given Ben’s growing interest in traditional craftsmanship, he should consider going to speak with her once he was released. Ben only had to supply three unknown Nabooian words in the process, which Rey tried to commit to memory.  


At last, she reached the letter’s end. Trying to inject all the love and care she knew Padmé felt about him as if the woman were here herself, she concluded, “ _‘My darling Ben, you know that I will always be here for you. Never forget you can reach out to me whenever you need me, and I will respond.’ ”_ Heat had begun creeping up her neck; why did reading this suddenly feel awkwardly intimate? “ _‘I love you, and forever will.’_ ”

 ** _Stars,_** _Padmé, why are you being even more saccharine than usual?_ she thought in despair.

“ _‘Yours, your grandmother,’_ ” she finished quickly.

Complete silence met her words.

Rey stared down at the shaky but distinguished handwriting for longer than necessary, heart inexplicably hammering unsteadily, before she steeled herself and looked up at Ben.

She wasn’t at all surprised to find he was already staring at her, his face as clouded and unreadable as it had been the moment he’d first seen her.

But something in his expression, in his very energy, had shifted.

Rey started when she noticed it; the change was so small it was unnameable, but some part of her sensed it was significant. Even his pallid skin seemed to have gained more color.

After some seconds of silence that stretched far too long, Ben cleared his throat. “You speak… Naboo… very well,” he seemed to force out, voice hoarse. All emotion, aggression or otherwise, had left his tone, but there was a question there that Rey didn’t miss.

She could feel herself flushing again - for once, not from anger - and didn’t quite want to allow herself to consider why. “I’m not anywhere near fluent yet, but I’m getting there. I like learning languages. Your grandmother and Maz and Solus Accu have been teaching it to me for the past year now.” When he didn’t immediately fill the brief pause between them, she quickly continued, “I know it isn’t widely spoken outside Naboo, but to me it sounds like pure music in comparison to the West Continental languages. So harsh and guttural,” she said, nose wrinkling. “I love hearing your grandmother speak Nabooian. It’s a beautiful way to know how to sound. I admit I’m a bit envious; you’re lucky to be fluent in it already.”

By the Force, she was actually _babbling_ , and Rey hastily forced her mouth to stop moving.

Ben just kept looking at her with that new, almost inscrutable but decidedly not ungentle gleam.

She hesitated, all too aware that their limited time together was quickly coming to a close. “Is there… anything you’d like me to tell your grandmother in reply?”  

His gaze finally dropped back to his right hand. Slowly, he clenched it into a fist, and again cleared his throat, swallowing visibly. So softly she doubted that even the two guards standing nearby could hear, he murmured, not in Alliance Basic but in the elegant, melodious lilt of High Naboo, “Tell her I… I love her and know that… with your help, she’ll finish healing quickly.”

Something stuttered in Rey’s chest.

Even with the lingering gravel of his underutilized voice, Naboo sounded so _indescribably different_ on Ben’s lips: Grounded. Low. Resonant.

Almost… sensual.

Rey’s neck went hot, and it took everything she had to restrain herself from ripping off the knit scarf from around it.

R’iia’s _breath_ , who was she? Did she really just think that?

Head still slightly lowered, Ben glanced up at her, but quickly averted his eyes, turning his head away so she could see only the flawless left side of his face, the strong curve of his flushed cheek and jaw and the specks of beauty marks dotting it.

She almost didn’t hear him add, even more softly, “I’ll write her soon. And… you as well, it would seem. Rey.”

In an instant, those murmured Naboo words, and her own bloody _name_ spoken in that very same accent -- the latter for no reason at all, really, as if he’d simply just wanted to say it -- awakened a powerful, obvious heat low in her belly that she had felt so rarely before, it was nearly unfamiliar to her.

But it didn’t mean Rey didn’t know exactly what it meant.

Her heart started racing faster. She took advantage of Ben’s sudden spark of either disinterest or uncharacteristic reticence to study and truly appreciate the unique shape of his face, his soft-looking hair, the sensitivity to his mouth and eyes that was almost a direct juxtaposition to the musculature of his powerful physique and overall _maleness_ \-- nothing at all like the men who’d attacked her last night.

Of course, Rey had been able to easily pick out those people who crossed her path who would be considered attractive, and she and Finn had had avid discussions about this many a time. It had been Rey’s opinion that attractiveness often didn’t stop many of them from being arseholes and assailants, and sometimes only _increased_ that likelihood. Finn was the first man she’d met who’d been beautifully attractive on the inside _and_ out.

But beyond the fact that her best friend preferred the broodier sex, Finn didn’t cause fire to curl around her chest when he spoke in Nabooian. Sweet, loyal Finn hadn’t been able to pick up a word of Nabooian.

Rey suddenly wanted to hear Ben Solo murmur almost anything to her in fluent High Naboo again. And again. She wanted to ask him _why_ \-- why he hated himself, when there was so much good to him. Who he wanted to be now that he didn’t have to be Kylo Ren or whoever bloody else people expected of him anymore. _Why_ he’d struggled so terribly with the Force as a child, either cutting himself off from it or having others do it for him, when to Rey it was so innate, so comfortable, like a second skin she never wanted to be rid of.

Her eyes widened.

Her heart stumbled to a momentary stop.

 _Oh sweet baby bantha balls. What in the name of the Force am I_ **_doing!_ **

Swallowing hard, Rey quickly sloughed off the boiling scarf lest her entire face turn bright red, and forced herself to look somewhere, _anywhere_ other than Ben’s face.

 _I cannot find Padmé’s grandson attractive. I cannot find Padmé’s grandson attractive._ This was prickly, private, pompous-to-a-fault Ben Organa Solo, for R’iia’s sake!

But he'd also ‘accepted her terms,’ as he'd so clinically put it, and for the past ten minutes, he'd been perfectly nice to her.

 _Hm, Rey, is 10 minutes really greater than an entire bloody_ **_year_ ** _? Dang, get a hold of yourself, woman!_

The last thought, she heard quite clearly in Finn’s voice.

Desperate for distraction, her gaze was drawn in horrified fascination to the Force Suppression collar around Ben’s neck instead. _Yes_. The perfect buzzkill.

What would it be like to be cut off entirely from the beautiful energy that flowed through her veins, that ebbed and flowed within her as closely and intimately as her very breath? She couldn’t begin to imagine it. To her, it seemed akin to dying while her heart still beat on.  

That such a thing was possible — and that it could be done against someone’s will, even someone as legendarily powerful in the Force as Ben Solo had been, chilled her to the bone. The threat of it had followed her like a nightmarish shadow her entire life.

Before she could stop herself, she asked, still in Nabooian, “Does it hurt?”

His unfocused gaze snapped to hers. It seemed to take him a confused moment to realize what she was looking at. “Why do you care?” he countered, any softness in his expression floundering beneath the sudden press of defensiveness in his tone.

Rey sighed heavily, crossing her arms. “R’iia’s breath, you tetchy moof-milker, I guess I don’t.” This was in her fully irate Republic Basic, though it lacked the rancor of her earlier retorts.

She supposed she shouldn’t have hoped to learn much about it while being supervised by two correctional officers, anyway.

… “Not usually.”

The response to her original question was said so quietly in Basic that for a moment, she wondered if she'd only imagined it. She looked back at Ben in surprise, but he was staring back at the counter in front of him rather than at her. “And,” he added, his voice again bitter and harsh, “it makes everyone else around me feel safer that the _monster’s_ _leashed_.”

What she might have assumed was aggression and belligerence twenty minutes ago, Rey now recognized as self-loathing.

It filled her with profound sadness _._

“Do you really think of yourself like that?” she asked Ben quietly. “As a monster?” Nabooian again.

He didn’t respond, didn’t even look at her. Something behind his expressive eyes had dulled and deadened.

“Minute left, now,” the Hosnian guard said pointedly. “Wrap it up, come on, scarface, let's get this bleedin’ holodrama over with.”

Whereas before, forty minutes had felt like a lifetime, sixty seconds now didn’t feel anywhere near long enough.

Rey leaned forward, ignoring the officer. “I don’t think Millie would have agreed,” she said. “I bet she adored you, Ben. Remember how you said she was looking for her old owners in everyone she saw, when you first got her? I bet she has _never_ stopped looking for you since the day she was adopted two weeks ago.”

The glistening of unshed tears abruptly sprung to his downcast eyes, and wrenched straight at her chest.  

“And your grandmother does, too. _Adores_ you _._ You, more than even your mother and her brother, are her shining star in the sky,” she said earnestly-- had observed that truth in Padmé’s discussions about her relatives.

A tormented expression of pure anguish rolled across Ben’s face. He’d begun physically shaking; he squeezed his eyes shut, trembling lips pressing together tightly, but Rey felt certain it was important he heard this before she left. “And even though you can be an insufferable, elitist pain in the arse…”

 _Then you speak soft, sweet things in High Naboo,_ her mind supplied treacherously.

“...I don’t think you’re so bad, either.”

His lips parted slightly.

Slowly, his swimming, emotion-filled gaze lifted to hers. The intensity there was almost indescribable -- soft and yet so very fierce; as if, even in a sea of people, his dark eyes would have found her, seen her, _known_ her.

All the breath rushed from Rey’s lungs.

She was so distracted, her stomach so entangled in knots, that she didn’t notice that awful tug of warning deep in her gut.

Until it was too late.

Like an air raid, alarms began to blare deafeningly, a previously dormant light above the far door flashing an ominous red. Rey jumped like a startled rabbit as a succession of loud, heavy thuds echoed from both that door and the one behind her, as if a hundred invisible deadbolts had locked into place.

The Mandalorian’s hand shot to his ear, and then he cursed heartily in Mando'a, clearly listening to some sort of comm device earpiece.

And in front of her, Ben’s facial expression went completely slack, and he began to violently convulse as if he’d fallen into a grand mal seizure.

Heart in her throat, Rey leapt from her seat, staring wide-eyed at the second, potentially slightly kinder Hosnian guard. “What’s going on?” she demanded, trying not to sound as panicked as she felt.

Looking disconcertingly unconcerned, he walked over to the slitted speakers as if Ben wasn’t having a bloody _fit_ right beside him, leaning toward the transparisteel gaps. “Lockdown. Means some sort of incident’s happenin’ elsewhere in the Detention Center. We’re required to shelter in place ‘til it's over; just stay calm and don't cause any trouble, an’ you’ll be free to go then.”

Stay calm? Stay _calm_? As if he expected her to do that while the person she was visiting appeared to be going into cardiac arrest!

Rey shoved her finger toward Ben, horrified. Over the din, she could barely hear muted groans of pain sporadically escaping his lips through gritted teeth. “What’s happening to him?”

The officer glanced down. “ ‘pression collar. Doubles as a neurophys’logical immobilizer. Keeps him subdued ‘til the incident’s over.”

 _Subdued?_ Force, it was bloody electrocuting him!

He lifted a brow, assessing her. “Not t’ worry, they come out of it. ‘ventually.”

“How long is the lockdown?” she gasped.

He shrugged. “Could be fifteen minutes, an hour or two. We’ll see what my partner finds out. ‘pologies for the volume of the sirens, but those’ll at least turn off in another ten minutes o’ so.”

An hour? An _hour?_ An entire _bloody hour?_

The Mandalorian officer called him over then, and disgust and outrage ballooned inside Rey as he simply left. This man was apologizing for the _noise_ while someone was being all but tortured in front of him for no good reason? How did this not constitute severe prisoner abuse? Did this happen with every R’iia-damned lockdown? How frequent were they?

It took only another few, horrified seconds of watching Ben spasm uncontrollably before she knew with overwhelming certainty that she couldn’t _not_ do something.

And she would need to use the Force to do it.

Here. In the middle of the Force-damned Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center itself.

 _Damn them,_ she thought, vehemently cursing anyone and everyone who was responsible for the terrible, cruel, _depraved_ Force Suppression technology that was now not only putting Ben at risk, but also her. _Damn them all to the bloody depths of Sith-filled hell._

Acutely aware of the cameras pointed straight at them, Rey wrapped her arms across her chest, trying to look worried, and pretended to look anywhere else but Ben.

Carefully, carefully, so R’iia-damned carefully… she stretched out her field of awareness toward the wretched band of metal around his thrashing neck.

It wasn’t simply smooth -- she swiftly noted there was a single, thin needle embedded at the dead center of the back of it, piercing the skin of his neck and extending to the very nerve center of his spine. She could feel the steady pulse of shocks the barbaric device was sending into him, and couldn’t spit enough thoughts of pure loathing at it as she maneuvered around it carefully.

Within a second, she found the chip and nanowiring controlling the electric impulses, as well an infinitesimal weakness on the left side of the needle, as if it had been attached to a separate piece of metal that had then been sealed onto the rest of the otherwise solid band.

Rey wriggled a tendril of the Force into that singular weakness at the collar’s back, enveloping the wiring with more energy at her control. Then, with as much power as she dared, she wrenched the molecules of metal and electronics apart with all the hatred she felt for it -- just enough to break the current’s flow and the effectiveness that a complete circle of the Force Suppressing metal may have provided, without any visible cracks.

At once, his seizures ceased.

Relief flooded her as Ben went limp, crumpling as minimally little as the restraints allowed. His chest heaved and shuddered against the metal band restricting it with deep, wheezing gasps. How in R’iia’s name could these people have expected him to withstand an hour -- or even _two_ \-- of that? Even in the binding cuffs, his hands and entire body still trembled violently, his once fluffy hair flaccid and slick with sweat.

And a single, cosmic tremor shook the very fabric of the Force itself, as if a great behemoth had awakened from its depths.

Rey froze.

Her heart stilled.

The shift was unlike anything she’d ever felt -- powerful, immense and so noticeable she suspected any Force-user from here to Hosnia Prime must have sensed it.

To her left, a tremendous energy that did not belong to her blossomed from seemingly nothing, like a mythological phoenix born from ashes and rising again with a fury. Like a dark, whirling tornado, it tightened and whirled violently around the slumped man on the other side of the transparisteel.

 _Oh._ **_Oh damn._**

Rey didn’t for a moment regret stopping what, in her mind, amounted to straight up torture. But now another potentially immense and possibly dangerous problem loomed before her:

What was _Ben_ going to do?

Anxiously, her eyes darted toward the two officers. Clearly neither was Force-sensitive, because they were so preoccupied with discussing the larger Detention Center situation, now via the square communications pad alongside the back door, that they hadn’t even noticed Ben’s change in status.

But Rey could.

Even half-unconscious, the Force that flowed through Ben was so vast and turbulent she could feel the power behind it without even trying, like a great rush of lashing hurricane-force winds that nonetheless left her hair and her body physically untouched. But the energy was so very different from the Force that Rey typically drew upon, writhing and almost toxic in its all-encompassing pain and chaos and hurt and rage.

Blood pounded hard through her ears.

Had he ever contemplated breaking out of prison? Now that he was free in the Force, would he take this opportunity to try? Ben always came across as a perfectly reasonable, rational human being in his letters to Padmé, except when he _wasn’t_ , which Rey knew very well wasn’t infrequently.

Damn it all, if only she could _talk_ to him, but the two corrections officers still didn’t seem to have any idea that anything was amiss, and Rey certainly didn’t trust Ben enough yet to try to see if she could somehow communicate mentally with him. (She’d only ever planted thoughts into others’ minds and had never experienced things the other way around, but she supposed if Ben did the same to her they might be able to have a conversation of some sort.)

 _Stars_ , was she about to become an unwilling accessory to the escape of one of the Alliance’s most abhorred public figures? That would surely be publicized; she would surely be investigated, and surely someone, _somewhere_ would figure out that she too was--?

That tug of warning, sharp and urgent, right in her gut.

Rey looked up.

The energy around Ben -- around _her_ \-- had shifted, filling every crevice of the visitation room. She felt it immediately: an immense, meteorically building surge, like a churning, uncontrollably growing flood, raging, erratic, unstable and overwhelming.

A cracking dam about to burst.

Ben’s head weakly lifted only an inch, his entire body shuddering with rapid, shallow breaths. As if he could raise it no further, glistening umber eyes instead lifted upward, instantly seeking and pinning her in place.

 _“Rey…”_ The softly gasped croak was laced with panic, eyes wide with horror and dread, ashen fingers clutching at the metal chair. “I… I can’t…”

_Oh no._

This wasn’t a man who was plotting to wield his newly returned powers to escape from prison.

This was a man who was drowning.

Suddenly the room was far, far too small for what Rey knew was coming. She wanted to fling herself out the door, but knew it was solidly locked and bolted, and that any abrupt movements would probably only get her arrested or stunned by a Z6 herself. For a moment, she thought about trying to contain it in some way -- try to fix the Suppression collar minus its working electrical circuit, perhaps? -- but quickly dismissed the idea; that would surely give away her own powers in the most dangerous place to be outed as a Force-sensitive.

Rey urgently pressed her hand flat against the transparisteel. “Ben. Look at me. _Stay_ with me.” Steadily she held his desperate, slanted gaze. “Try to breathe. _Breathe.”_

He shook his head, the motion a small, rigid jerk. “Get -- _away--!”_

The buildup of combustible, repressed Force energy in the confined space was so volatile, thick and suffocating now that even the guards couldn’t _not_ sense it. They spun, for a moment only staring at Ben’s non-convulsing form in disbelief.

Swift as a whip, the Mandalorian cursed violently, snapped out his Z6, and lunged—

Sheer power exploded violently outward from Ben in every direction. The full transparisteel windows immediately shattered in an ear-splitting _crack_ , the half-wall below it that had further bisected the room blowing completely apart.

Rey flung up her arms to cover her face, but the force of the shockwave blew her off her feet, slamming her hard into the nearest wall. She collapsed to the floor, but the small warning Ben had given her and her instinctive, defensive walling off of herself with the Force protected her from the penetration of a hail of transparisteel, dust and metal.

In the ringing stillness that followed, her breath caught.

The lockdown alarm was still blaring.

And Ben’s wave of untamed energy was _still_ thrashing and billowing like a terrible tempest.

Sweet _mother_ of R’iia, she had never imagined that Force powers could be so raw and uncontrollable. While her experience may have been greatly limited, she had some sense of the extent of her own abilities. Despite that, she’d never once been in a situation where she’d lost command of them entirely -- and she’d been in some situations.

Then again, she’d never been cut off from the Force for more than half a decade, either.

Cautiously, Rey lowered her arms. A powdery grey snow of dust and debris had settled on them, still floating through the air around her like a fine mist. She gingerly lifted her scarf to cover her nose and mouth, pushing herself to her knees with a wince.

She looked up.  

The visitation room was utterly destroyed.

The seat she’d been sitting in earlier was legitimately blown apart. Only rubble and air remained between her and the two officers who’d been flung to the floor like rag dolls themselves. Rey was immensely surprised the primary perimeter walls of the room hadn’t been blown out; they must have been constructed with triple reinforcements at a minimum.

Above them, the artificial fluorescent lights spat and flickered, and Ben — Ben was still shackled firmly to the metal chair, but now it, and he, was laying sideways on the cement floor facing her, the chair wrenched clean out of its deadbolts, his eyes and much of his face covered by wildly blown, debris-covered hair. He was trembling violently, chest still heaving with stuttered, panicked breaths.

Quickly, she sat up in worry, but before she could move or say a thing, the Mandalorian guard stirred on the ground with a cough and a shift of plaster and metal, blood streaming from his nose and ears. Jagged pieces of transparisteel protruded from rips in his uniform. For a moment, Rey almost felt sorry for him.

Then he sat up, grimacing, a feral expression of pure hatred curling at his lips. In a heartbeat, he lunged across the shard-covered floor with the Z6, shoving the cracking, spitting electricity straight into Ben through that cursed hole Rey knew had been deliberately cut into the back of the chair.

The voltage had clearly been cranked far beyond simple stun.

Ben screamed in agony. His power immediately surged, the imprint of excruciating, unendurable pain shoving outward in the Force and through Rey like a terrible echo.

“No!” Rey gasped, but the word emerged fainter than she expected, and she started coughing through the polluted air instead.

Of course the sadistic son of a bantha didn’t heed her in the slightest anyway.

Only a moment later, Ben’s immense Force presence vanished to all but a mere flicker, like a blazing candle snuffed into unconsciousness with only a thin wisp of smoke in its wake... and still the Mandalorian officer continued to electrocute him, teeth bared. Heart thundering in her ears, Rey desperately glanced toward the second officer, praying to the Force he’d put a stop to it, but the stout man still hadn’t moved from the crumpled position in which he’d landed, though she could sense that he was alive.

At last, she leapt to her feet, damning any consequences that might come to herself.

 _“Stop_ it!” she screamed. “You'll kill him!”

The officer’s attention ripped backward from Ben; to her unspeakable relief, the Z6 followed it. His pupils were blown so wide the green of his irises was nearly obscured completely, like a rampaging rancor high off a sadistic power trip and the adrenaline of the situation as a whole.

Unfortunately for her, his wild-eyed gaze widened further when he noticed the transparisteel dividing the room had blown out.

“You — stay down! On the floor!” he bellowed in his accented Alliance Basic, like she too had a criminal record and had personally helped launch this attack, even though she _didn’t_ and _hadn’t_ (or, at least, he sure didn't know that) and had obviously been cleared by CDC security.

Rey held up her hands, blinking back tears. “I’m not moving. I’m not moving,” she said hastily, sinking back to the ground.

Did he at all suspect her of breaking Ben’s Force Suppression collar? she thought, not without some panic. Or would he have acted the same even if Padmé were here instead?

She had her answer when the guard stumbled to his feet, staggering to the comm beside the door. He slapped the transmit button and barked in Mando'a, “We have a fragging _Code 49_ in Visitation Room 6! I repeat, a _Code 49_. Get me at least fifteen Suppression guns and another Suppression collar right now! I don’t care if you have to break down your _lewzda_ doors to get to mine.” He tried to stand on his left leg and hissed. “And I need a _Force_ -cursed medic.”

Biting her lip hard, Rey glanced back at Ben. The shock of the Z6 had sent his hair flying outward from his head, leaving the burns and scarring that raked across the right side of his face horrifically prominent; they must have been excruciating to originally sustain. His eyes were closed, unconscious expression frozen in torment. She could just make out small trails of wetness tracing down the fine layer of dust from the corners of his eyes to his left ear, merging with blood on the floor and on his temple and left cheek where they had collided with cement and glass.

The brunch she’d delighted in eating only two hours earlier abruptly threatened to come hurling back up.

Suddenly, the Mandalorian bellowed, “Is it broken? Yes, it’s Force-damned broken! I don’t know _how_ , it just is!”

 _Good, he has no bloody clue,_ she thought grimly.

He held his earpiece up to his bleeding ear; it must have blown out in the explosion. “That’s right, that evil Sithspawn tried to kill us. Me, Delwa, even the sexy _skazz_ visiting him he was fragging mooning over five minutes ago. And if you don’t get your situation under control, you’ll have an even bigger one here in gods know how soon!”

Oh no.

Rey instantly dismissed the cretin’s crude assessment of her, instead locking onto the blanket judgement he’d just passed on Ben.  

It wasn’t true.

Rey had seen it in the panic and fear in Ben’s eyes. He hadn’t wanted this to happen; he’d tried to warn her. With the last bit of control he’d possessed, he’d warned her.

She could see how the officers might have a very different point of view, but she certainly wasn’t going to stand by while they tried to unfairly blame him for something far worse… especially since this entire situation may have slightly been her fault.

Destruction? Attempted murder and escape? She guessed that would mean _years_ more in this abusive, horrific place beyond Ben’s original sentence.

Ice filled her veins on his behalf at the thought of it.

Baring her teeth at the Mandalorian officer’s back, Rey swore she’d tell Captain Phasma every bloody detail of what had happened (minus her role in it, of course). Screens cracked as they were now, the security cameras must have captured her exchange with Ben; it would be blatantly obvious he’d simply lost control, despite how hard he’d tried not to otherwise. Even if they didn’t accept that at face value, once Padmé found out the truth, she’d fight to the end for him, too.

It gave Rey more confidence than perhaps, in that moment, she rightfully should’ve had.

“...filthy sorcerer skugs, I don’t know why the government hasn’t eliminated every one of them left yet, starting with this ugly fragger. It isn’t as if they don’t know where they are,” the Mandalorian snarled into the comm, slapping Rey with an unnecessary reminder of why she’d taken every single precaution she had every day of her life. “Now get this cursed lockdown ended and get me that collar; I’ll keep this Force-forsaken abomination choking on maximum voltage if he even tries waking up first.”

She sat up straight.

 _No._ No.

She didn’t stop to question the sudden strength of her protectiveness.

All she knew was that this cruel brute of man who so ironically believed with all his blackened soul that Ben was the monster between them was _not_ going to hurt him again. She wouldn’t let him.

Which meant that Ben couldn’t wake up again before the lockdown ended.

At that moment, as if the bloody universe was suddenly against her, Rey felt his weak energy flutter and then slowly begin to swell in churning, strengthening spikes every time the alarm howled deafeningly.

He was already regaining consciousness.

Well, on to Plan H, then.

Gritting her jaw as she attempted to ignore the jarring sound (she could only pray ten minutes would be up soon), Rey wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face in her knees, blocking out the flickering fluorescent lights completely.

Let her look weak and afraid. Let her appear small and unassuming and like the last thing that could be a threat.

In the cover and protection the darkness provided, she reached for the embers of light and stability constantly burning at the core of her being, and _focused._  

Though her physical vision was blocked, she wasn’t at all sightless. Rey had often successfully navigated like this in the pitch darkness of moonless nights, feeling the solid forms and empty air all around her — the balance of all things, and the energy that flowed through and around all of it.

Right now, the only presence in this room she could feel as clear as sight was Ben’s. His pulsating, burgeoning energy was so tumultuous and immense it overwhelmed everything else, even a clear sense of the two corrections officers.

And she had to calm him down before _they_ sensed the change in _him._

With her mind, she reached forward with her ‘Force hands,’ as she called it, cautiously approaching Ben’s own tautly coiled, trembling energetic body on the ground only a few feet from her. It seemed nearly solid in and of itself; though Ben himself lay motionless, his unspeakably powerful connection to the Force writhed and radiated with increasing instability, thrashing and erratic and so filled with a heartbreaking amount of pain and fear that it felt far more destructive than life-giving.

Despite that, Rey wasn’t afraid. She felt stable in herself, and knew from the explosion that she could block it if she needed to. However, it quickly became very clear that Ben...

Ben was _terrified._

[She’d hardly neared him when a disjointed, increasingly panicking jumble of thoughts slammed into her, into the triple-reinforced walls of the visitation room themselves, screaming so loudly she could have probably heard them halfway across the Central Detention Center.

 _‘Oh Force, please, I can’t… focus, can’t focus, can’t move, can’t -- breathe, can’t… stop, oh Force, please make it stop, please,_ **_please_** _, no, not again, not now, oh Force, oh Force, no, Rey…’_

Her heart stopped.

Stars, had he just thought… _her_ name, as panicked and anguished as the rest of it?

At his devastating fear of himself and of what once had surely been a beautiful force within him, such compassion and sadness for him surged through Rey that her eyes burned with tears and her chest ached.

She didn’t pause, didn’t hesitate.

Summoning all of the soft, stable energy inside her, Rey mentally closed the rest of the gap between them and tenderly wrapped it around him like a warm, comforting cloak.

 _‘Ben. Sssh. Be silent. Be still,’_ she projected comfortingly; for good measure, she did it in Nabooian. ‘ _You’re safe, Ben. You’re safe.’_

She felt more than heard him inhale the softest of astonished, shuddering breaths.

For a split second, the world went completely still.

And then so much terror, panic, abject loneliness and pain slammed into her that it snatched the very air from her lungs. It was nearly unfathomable, desperately thrashing and shuddering against her energetic grasp, and into her knees, Rey muffled a soft gasp of her own. It took almost all her strength to contain it, holding to it tight, and at once she understood how very easily the Force had simply erupted from him in a violent explosion minutes ago.

How could any one person bear to hold all this inside them?

So overwhelming was the immensity of his emotional trauma, surrounding and enveloping her as tightly as her light was him, that Rey was vaguely aware a steady stream of tears were now freely dampening the fabric of her pants. If she couldn’t help him _right now,_ some part of her whispered, there was a very good chance he would only detonate again -- and the consequences could be far more damning.

‘ _Ben,_ ** _listen_** _. Listen to my voice and not the alarm,’_ Rey urged him soothingly. _‘You’re not alone with this. I’m here with you, and together we’re going to make this better. It’s going to be alright, Ben. It’s going to be alright.’_

She had done this before for children, sometimes — at first, unconsciously, as a child herself, helping to reassure (with wild success) the few foster siblings and school friends who were kind to her on bad days. Then, as she’d matured and realized the true nature of this ability, she’d become more careful, more cautious about where and who she comforted -- always instructing them to forget she’d ever done it afterward.

As far as she’d known, she’d never used Force suggestion on a fellow Force-sensitive before, let alone a powerful one, and suspected it wouldn’t affect Ben much beyond serving as a simple, non-binding reminder.

Which, in a way, made her all the more astonished when the spiraling turmoil of thoughts and emotions clouding Ben’s ability to rein in his tumultuous abilities roiled and spasmed… but did not continue to exponentially balloon outward.

As if he’d actually _listened_ to her.

Rey let out a soft breath of relief.

Carefully, _so very_ carefully, she lightly cradled his face in the energy of her Force hands and hummed softly, reassuringly. ‘ _Good —_ ** _good,_** _Ben._ _See? You’re alright. You’re alright. Just breathe.’_

Another gaping, powerful surge of shock and terror and doubt flailed against her, but Rey now had complete confidence that Ben could do this. She knew from the calm, sensible stability of his letters to Padmé alone that he could find the balance and safety in himself that she now understood she herself had been unspeakably fortunate to have known since childhood.

He just had to remember how.

Hastily, Rey shifted some tendrils of energy to his cheek, stroking it gently, comfortingly. ‘ _No, no — don’t be afraid. Whatever this is, I feel it too. You’re safe, Ben. I’ve got you. You can do this, I know you can do this. Stay with me._ ** _Breathe…_** _breathe.’_

And, to her astonishment… He did.

Peeking over her knees, Rey watched Ben’s faintly trembling, sideways body take a slow, ragged breath, only to shudder and choke on it. But then he tried again, and again, as she wordlessly murmured quiet encouragement to him.

And then… a soft, tremoring exhale.]

Like a key turning into place, something in Ben’s chaotic energy abruptly shifted — a calmness unlocked.

A lone tear slid from the corner of his closed right eye, reflecting the dim, pulsating lights as it slipped over the crooked bridge of his nose and down the side of his face to his blood-spattered temple. Stronger than his panic now, dumbfoundment and gratefulness and sheer, throbbing relief radiated from his every pore.

It simultaneously broke and emboldened her. Rey hadn’t been entirely sure Ben wanted her there, before. Now, biting back her own tears, she reburied her face in her knees, freely pouring the perpetual, steadfast warmth of her Force energy around him, memories of Varykino and sunshine and good food and happiness, holding him with arms that on a physical plane did not exist, sharing with him her calm, her stability, her peace, and her pride that he’d already done so well — had walked himself back from the edge with only a little guidance from her.

Slowly but steadily, the toxic sludge of raging energy surrounding him subsided to something quiet and settled that was… was almost _familiar_ : a solid security in darkness’s comforting embrace that Rey couldn’t quite say she hadn’t sensed herself at times.

The last she had done anything like this, it had been for Finn, in the midst of nightmares from his years as a child soldier for a First Order cartel, and made sure he never remembered why he’d slept so well the next day.

This was a completely different experience entirely. Because, as Ben's energy settled, entwining with hers, sinking _into_ hers... Rey began to feel something _back._

It was like a calm, windless night over Varykino, the world in darkness fully alive yet silent and still, drawing and welcoming her into its quiet embrace without struggle or resistance, as if this too had always belonged to her and had been waiting for her to arrive. It wound and wove around her memories of the sunlight streaking through the leaves outside the windows of her Varykino room until the shared energy between them looked and felt something like twilight, or dawn: a time suspended between moonlight and sunlight that drew upon both yet did not bow to either, beautiful, and peaceful, and safe, so free of the turbulent energy even Rey experienced sometimes in the rise and fall of her temper.

It felt right, and balanced, somehow.

It felt… it felt like _home._

A long, shuddering exhale escaped her lips that she didn’t know she’d been holding, didn’t realize they were stretched with a small, contented smile, that the anxious strain in her muscles had vanished until she was so relaxed she almost slumped sideways--

A searing, violent, electrifying heat plunged straight into her back, like lightning itself was bearing down on her with its fullest fury.

She spasmed forward sharply, her shriek of surprise and pain thank the _Force_ muffled in her knees. A hoarse, answering scream a few octaves lower ripped from someone else nearby, jarring Rey from the waves of pain wracking through her body. Her _knees_ \-- What? _What?_

Her head jerked back, eyes wide and wild.

The round-faced Hosnian officer, now apparently having regained consciousness, had crawled behind Ben; she could just make out the white-hot sparks of the Z6 crackling behind him.

Through a haze of pain, agonized, furious words spilled from her mouth in gasps before she could stop them. “What -- are you -- _doing?”_

By the grace of all that was good, it startled the officer enough for him to pull back.

Rey wheezed hard in relief, and the world righted itself again.

Ben’s presence in the Force -- entwined in _her_ \-- was again all but gone.  

He was unconscious again. Because they’d bloody well _electrocuted him_ with no good reason. _Again._

The Hosnian stared at her in bewilderment, as if he couldn’t understand why she was upset. “I’m… makin’ damn sure he stays down. Keepin’ us all _safe,_ ma’am.”

Like a shadow, or an echo, the imprint of the high-voltage electricity shoved into a back that wasn’t hers impossibly lingered on her skin anyway, and it made her reckless. She wiped harshly at the dampness around her eyes. “He _was_ down! He wasn’t hurting anything!”

The Hosnian’s expression turned to one of sheer disbelief, his face as bloody and dusty as the other officer’s had been. “‘Tryin’a be polite here, but do you _see_ what’s left o’ this fraggin’ room? You’re lucky you aren’t hurt! Now stay out of our way an’ let us do our damned jobs. I’m sure your boyfriend’ll live -- if _we_ do.”

“That _skazz_ might look good in a bed, but she’s as mouthy as a sarlaac. I’d’ve shoved something in it to shut her up fifteen minutes ago if she wasn’t some posh bitch,” the Mandalorian commented in Mando'a, lip curled in his own amusement at the thought. Again underestimating her intelligence and her ability to speak multiple languages, at his peril.

For a split second, Rey desperately wished she had this vile man alone in the unpatrolled back alleys of Jakku so she could _correct_ his assumptions, starting with the one that she wouldn’t hurl him against a brick wall with the full fury of the Force and stand back while the metal balcony above him came crashing down on his head.

For Ben’s sake, she forced herself to breathe -- _breathe_ \-- and stand down, stay calm, pretend she was blissfully ignorant of every threat and abuse of authority he’d freely spoken. She knew how this looked, and that she would win no argument with these men right now.

When this was over, Rey repeated to herself, she would tell Captain Phasma _everything_.

The Hosnian dragged himself back over to his partner, the two sitting on the floor beneath the wall comm figuratively licking their many bleeding wounds and listening intently to their earpieces between muttering heatedly to each other.

Reassured of their preoccupation for the time being, Rey buried her face back in her knees, entwining herself back in Ben’s increasingly familiar energy and surrounding him with her own.

Whenever he started to come to, she’d be right there to catch him.

Even if his continued calmness no longer guaranteed these sons of a bantha would leave him be.

She thought of the cuts and blood across the side of his face, and wondered if she could Force heal someone else from this distance; while Force healing of herself was a necessary skill she’d perfected long ago, she rarely attempted it on other people, but given the surprising success of her energy’s connection with Ben’s, she felt certain it could work here.

Rey focused her awareness to his injured temple and easily sensed a disturbance there -- the molecular chaos of torn skin and shards of transparisteel. Breathing deeply, she lifted his head ever-so-slightly, sweeping away the debris from beneath it, and carefully pulled the embedded fragments free. Then, she focused every bit of the light and love inside her on returning order, creating wholeness, to the gashes that remained.

She didn’t need to open her eyes to feel when the wounds closed, and let out a soft breath in acknowledgement, nodding to herself and silently thanking the Force, as she often did.

This close to his head, it was fascinating to observe his weakly thrumming presence through that same Force so closely. Before, having experienced that infamous toxic cocktail of raging emotions for herself, Rey could see why the world assumed Ben Solo was a master of their idea of the Dark Side of the Force. Settled like this, though, his energy, while still possessing a certain sadness and heaviness to it even while he lay unconscious, wasn’t evil, or “dark.” It just… was, like Rey’s simply was.

She flat out avoided going into his mind. Poking around it while he was unconscious seemed as violating as only other unconsented penetration, and, had their roles been reversed, she knew she would have been furious at such an intrusion.

But every now and then, small flickers of memories floated past her awareness, like solar flares peeling off the surface of the sun. And Rey was a curious soul -- had been as long as she could remember. Born with nothing and so often given nothing afterward, she had been molded to explore, to seek and scavenge for whatever interesting or unwanted items and useful ideas that could keep her alive, or serve the interests of whoever else she’d been relying on at the time.

As those abbreviated snippets of memory continued to freely pass her, practically begging her to look at them… she didn’t turn away.

The flourish of a brush against paper.

Younger hands she realized were Padmé’s solely by the royal Naboo seal on the golden ring, free of the wrinkles and age spots that dotted them now.

A mustard yellow loth-cat with white socks for feet, purring with as happy a sound as she’d ever heard from a loth-cat.

A mostly untouched plate of food tucked onto the far end of an empty table, before the view shifted with palpable longing to a ridiculously beautiful student dining hall filled with scores of animatedly chatting young people who didn’t even glance in that direction.

A flash of red, and a horrific scent of ozone and burnt flesh.

A stunning curve of surging, thunderous waterfalls she recognized from the Lake Country that wrapped in a towering crescent around a field of a green.

A beautiful, antique silver sports car, polished and buffed with obvious love, and the flash of a craggy, crooked grin.

A silver, wiry-haired mutt looking upward, eyes bright, short tail wagging affectionately.

 _Millie,_ Rey guessed with a brief smile into her knees, and then quickly thought back to the silver car.

Wasn’t… Han Solo’s famous race car named--?

At that moment, cold, trembling tendrils of the Force that _were not hers_ brushed at her mind.

Rey gasped sharply, clutching her arms around her legs. With the shock of the Z6’s electrocution fresh in her mind, panic and the instinctive urge to _protect herself_ flared to life.

Immediately, she grasped that foreign, ghostly appendage _touching her brain_ like nothing else had in her entire life and shoved forward and out hard, with no real mind as to where she was shoving _to_.

It was the wrong thing to do.

Almost instantaneously, without any reference as to what was up or down, Rey was fully immersed, _drowning_ in memories and visions of a life she’d never lived.

A dark metal cuff around a small, pale wrist, its make not unlike the Suppression collar around Ben’s neck.

A locked door in an otherwise small, darkened space that would not open no matter how desperately she shoved it, and somewhere beyond it, laughter -- horrific, raucous laughter.

Someone crying, _“Mother, please don’t make me go there, please!”_

Seven shadowy figures in hoods and robes and weapons raised that vanished in a blinding, mushrooming ball of flame.

And then the visions righted and Rey was standing on the roof of what appeared to be a sprawling country estate, or perhaps it was that same, expensive school, because she was surrounded by a large group of teenagers in fancy uniforms who looked… well, in a word, they looked murderous.

Rey studied them in bewildered concern until a voice she vaguely recognized spoke behind them, though it was higher-pitched and even softer than she’d last heard it.

 _“You don’t — You don’t have to do this._ **_Please._ ** _I’ve done nothing to you. To any of you.”_

_Rey spun._

_Only a few feet from her, Ben Solo was backed against the edge of the roof, though he couldn’t have been more than 14 or 15 here, shorter, skinnier, smaller, with knobby knees and a mop of wild black hair that didn’t quite cover his ears. She was horrified when she saw that blood dripped from his nose, smearing across his lips and chin. A pile of books and some pens were scattered across the rooftop beside him, as if they’d been flung there._

_One girl stepped forward threateningly. “You’ve taken up our air and breathed! Isn’t that enough?”_

_Ben’s frantically roving gaze landed on one of the students. Far from the cold mask he had automatically donned with Rey when she’d entered the visitation room, the face and voice of his child self were open and pleading. “Daxim, I— when I tutored you for Alliance Basic. I-- I thought we were friends. Have I changed at all since then?” When Daxim avoided his gaze, Ben pressed, sounding desperate, “Have I?”_

_“You don’t have to; who knows when you’ll go off just like_ **_Vader_ ** _did!” Daxim at last snapped; Ben recoiled at the force of his vitriol._

_“But I’m-- I’m not him. I didn’t even know him!”_

_“Not yet! Supposedly everyone thought he_ _was normal, too, before! Your grandmother certainly did!”_

_Ben tensed, and his fists clenched at his sides. “Don’t bring her into—”_

_“Oh, threatening us already?” another boy taunted. “They’ll lock you up and throw you away forever like the monster you are if you dare try a thing. You’re well ahead of even Vader, though, aren’t you? You’re already not normal, Force freak. Hiding in the shadows, keeping to yourself, talking to your weird pets, doing your dark wizardry. You’re already long gone.”_

_“I wouldn’t hide if you wanted me in the light, but you don’t! No one does!” Ben flung out, and beyond the aggression, Rey heard the raw pain in his voice — started to understand why he’d been so defensive with her from the very start, fifteen years later. Abandoning the books, he tried to push past the group of them. “I’m_ leaving _; let me go.”_

_Two broader boys shoved him backward, so hard he stumbled and nearly tripped over the metal ledge encircling the roof. He tumbled against it, nothing between him and a thirty foot fall except scraped, bleeding knuckles gripping the edge._

_“We’re not done with you yet,_ ** _Sithspawn_** _,” one said. “My parents were both Enforcers in Coruscant. They fought the Empire to their last breath. He murdered them both_ _five days after I was born. Burned them alive. And you -- you’re of his_ ** _blood_** _, have his magic? You deserve no better, before you become just like him and come back for us!”_ ** __**

_Ben blinked back eyes visibly glistening with tears, briefly staring upward at the sky before squeezing them shut. Rey noticed that his hands, his entire body was trembling, sweat beading at his temples, as if he was straining against some great, terrible force. “I don’t want to hurt any of you, please_ **_go,”_ **_he choked._

_“Another threat?” a purple-haired girl sneered, even though it was clear to Rey that Ben hadn’t meant it in that way at all. She jerked her chin. “Show him, Jorra. Show him what befalls whatever monstrosities that could love a monster.”_

_[The group of teenagers parted. Then, tossed at Ben’s feet was the small, limp body of a mustard yellow loth-cat with white socks for feet._

_It was dead._

_Ben stared at it, transfixed in horror, and Rey recognized that he hadn’t only known this animal, he had_ **_loved_ ** _this animal. “Shiraya,” he breathed, tears flooding his eyes, and somehow Rey knew the ancient Naboo moon goddess’s name had been the loth-cat’s as well._

**_Snap._ **

_The sudden sound was awful and terrible, and Ben looked up swiftly as a second loth-cat, this one tabby and sleek, was shook out of a bag and tossed crudely beside the first, its head lolling at an unnatural angle.]_

_“No!” The agonized word was ripped from both of them simultaneously; Rey felt the same horror Ben did, accompanied by a rush of overwhelming, all-encompassing anger at the full understanding this second loth-cat had literally just been killed, murdered, a moment before._

_“Yes.” The same girl who’d called the cat’s killer forward swept her hand toward the roof’s edge, and the empty air beyond. “Maybe you should join them in the afterworld while they’re still close enough to remember you. I hear the fall can be rather exhilarating. While it lasts.”_

_More than one teenager in the crowd actually laughed at that; the others began a loud, vicious chant:_

_“Jump, jump,_ **_jump, jump....”_ **

_Ben looked up at them, at these malicious near-adults who somehow thought they were in the right, tears streaming down his face, expression wild with pain and grief, body trembling so badly it no longer seemed fully natural — and then his lips parted, eyes flashing wide with surprise and panic._

_With pained cry, his chest heaved forward, his body crumpling into a ball._

_As if a bomb had been detonated beneath it, a shockwave rocked the brick rooftop like an earthquake._

_In the span of a breath, the roof, and all the teenagers standing atop it, simply disappeared in a cloud of dust. Ben, shoved atop the narrow but still-standing outer metal ledge, was the only one spared the fall. Gripping it tightly, he was left alone in the awful silence that followed, shivering violently and weeping in horror and grief._

_Just as she had in the visitation room explosion, Rey had seen clearly in Ben’s reaction that this had been another accident, another spiralling loss of control. But at least one of the children had died, she knew from Takadona Way travelers’ gossiping stories, and afterward, they called him a child sociopath, a murderer, a Dark Side demon -- everything they had called Darth Vader, and more._

_After a few minutes, and the sound of screams, Ben briefly looked up at the sky, young face twisted with a pain Rey couldn’t in all the languages she knew find the proper words to describe. Then he closed his red-rimmed, swollen eyes, and let himself fall off what was left of the roof, too._

_It wasn’t clear whether he’d intended for the Force to catch him at the end of the plunge._

In a dizzying whirl, her surroundings abruptly shifted to the nocturnal darkness of an unlit warehouse stacked high with wooden crates and boxes, and all Rey wanted to do was get out, _get_ _out_ of this hellish mindscape in which she seemed to be inexorably trapped, but she didn’t have the experience to understand how to disentangle herself from a bloody Force-user _mind meld_ , not when she seemed to be standing in the midst of scenes so tangible and real it was as if she herself was actually there.

Her heartbeat careened wildly in her ears as she now faced two specters, one swathed in black with a terrifying mask that Rey recognized instantly from propaganda pieces, from bedtime horror stories, and the other in a cloak that legitimately appeared to be made of spun gold.

_“Snuffing a life is more personal, more instructional without the aid of a tool.”_

_It was the gold-robed man who spoke first, gesturing eagerly at Rey. “I want you to kill this man. Crush his throat with the raw power inside you.”_

_Heart in her throat, Rey looked behind her, feeling sick. She quickly stepped aside; on his knees before them was an oversized Huttese man with wide, bugged eyes. Though he had no obvious bindings, he appeared frozen._

_For a long time, the tall black figure was motionless, arm outstretched, turbulent Force energy spiking with those same warring maelstrom of emotions that Rey now would know anywhere. Then the hand lowered, and a deeper man’s voice said, “I — I won’t.” He ripped the mask from his head, and there before her stood Ben Solo, but he was young, Force be good, he was still_ **_so young_ ** _— could only have been a few years older than he’d been in the last memory, though he was taller and broader now, his unscarred, not unhandsome face pale._

_Ben took a step backward, shaking his head. “My freedom is not worth this. Do with me what you want. I can’t do this. I-- I refuse to do this.”_

_For a moment, the devastating turmoil of warring, raging emotions around him ceased._

_The man on the ground simultaneously looked stunned and worshipful._

_The was a pregnant pause._

_The gold figure burst into laughter. “Freedom? Is that what you think you gained when I removed that collar they had otherwise sealed forever around your neck? Freedom is never free, boy. It comes at a steep price. Which means I_ **_will_ ** _do with you what I want.”_

_Unlike Ben, the vast power wrapped around this man was as cold and endless as the vacuums of space and yet filled with steady conviction, with selfishness and ancient secrets and a detached, soul-crushing brutality._

_A name came to her in the void._

Snoke.

_Rey's blood chilled._

_This was the evil overlord of the entire First Order empire… a man so mysterious, nary a single photo of him existed. Not even his real name had been publicly known until Ben had brought down the First Order from the inside out --  only his title, ‘Supreme Leader,’ which had been whispered in the dark backrooms of Jakku outposts with even more terror than ‘the Knights of Ren.’_

_His lips, barely visible beneath the shadows of the hood, twisted cruelly. “Do you know what will happen if you don’t kill this man, Ben Organa Solo? Someone you love, more than anything else in the world, will die in his place.”_

_Ben stilled. “You — You wouldn’t.”_

_“Oh, I would.” Like a predator closing in on its prey, the gold-cloaked figure circled him slowly. “You see, young Solo, I know your mind, your soul. You have your grandfather’s potential, but your grandmother’s heart. You’re nothing but a resounding disappointment, a weak, sentimental fool of a boy, but I am not so blind to the ways of the Light. I am aware that love can be a powerful tool. So at every moment, with every move Her Eminence Padmé Amidala makes, there are scopes trained on her, bullets with no other name than hers carved upon them, waiting for me to simply give the word. And I assure you, I will.”_

_“No.”_ _The word was breathed in pure horror and dread._

 ** _“Yes._ ** _Oh, and what a beautiful, selfless woman. The world would truly mourn her loss, and will mourn her loss, if you so much as once —_ **_once —_ ** _step out of line again. And you, my unwilling apprentice--’ the designation was said with a dark chuckle of humor, “--will also feel the pain of your transgressions.”_ **__ **

_Unexpectedly, lightning flashed from Snoke’s fingertips; Rey gasped, leaping back in horror, as Ben careened backward, slamming into a tower of the immense crates filling the warehouse before crumpling to the ground._

_With a gait that betrayed a considerable age, Snoke shuffled closer. Crooking his fingers with an almost carnal smile, he forced Ben to his knees, though his lips curled in distaste at the tears clinging to the young man’s cheeks. His thoughts were screaming, and were apparent even to Rey:_

_Mistake, mistake, this was such a mistake--_

_“Mistake? Oh yes.” And Snoke too, it appeared. He reached out with a wizened thumb, and Ben shuddered as the dark Force user smeared a drop of the liquid disgustedly across his thin face. “Foolish child. You must know that this world will never love or accept you the way you so desperately long to be. That you will forever be unwanted and alone.”_

_More tears silently streaked from Ben’s eyes, but Snoke seemed to relish his pain with something almost like glee and continued without pause, “They will always despise you. They will always fear you. They will always seek to leash and suppress you. You could have taken that truth and made yourself great, stood above every one of them and reveled in your power to bring them to their knees. Instead, here you kneel now like this pathetic worm of a creature beside you, and will continue to kneel for many years, Kylo Ren, before my time with you is done.”_

_With a wave of his hand, Snoke dragged Ben forward to face the Huttese man. “_ **_Now-- kill--”_**

Without any warning whatsoever, Rey was flung from the memory, rocketing back into the darkness of her own vision, the feel of her face pressed hard against her knees. She hauled in a gasp, but had no further time to recover or process the horrors she had just seen.

Her forehead exploded with excruciating pain that rivaled the worst dehydration migraine she’d ever had.

Ben’s simple brush against her mind earlier hadn’t been invasive. It had been nothing. Because right now, she _felt_ him burrowing like a parasite deep inside the furrows of her mind, rifling through _her_ thoughts, her memories and emotions and things she was quite certain she never wanted anyone to see.

And it bloody well **_hurt._**

Rey had no idea how much time passed while she unsuccessfully fought to shove him out, or what memories he was looking at, or why he wouldn’t _for the love of the Force and R’iia_ just be a gods-damned gentleman and do the right thing and leave himself, since between the two of them he surely must have received some training as Snoke’s apprentice, no matter how coerced, and probably actually knew how to do whatever that involved _._

She could hardly even breathe until she grit her teeth, managed to sort out through a hazy, pounding fog that it was actually possible to grasp onto the foreign energetic presence, and pushed, _pushed_ with all the Force within her.

 _‘Ben, get_ **_out!’_ **

All at once, the overwhelming pressure and presence was gone.

Rey gulped in a great gasp, parted her knees enough that she could desperately suck in air through the space between them without being obvious about it. By some small miracle she was still crouched an innocuous ball in a corner of the interrogation room, while the two corrections officers argued in the far opposite corner about something happening in Block 385 and why it was taking so fragging long to resolve it, the Hosnian trying to bind a heavily bleeding leg with fabric he appeared to have ripped off his own uniform.

Like the lingering imprint of his electrocution against the skin of her back, some imprint of Ben’s presence in her mind unnervingly lingered, too; Rey was still acutely aware of his nearness and his consciousness as if her eyes were open and he was standing right beside her.

What could he have possibly have seen of her past, knowing what highly personal memories she’d seen of his?

Head still pounding, she growled and lashed out at his mind like every other thought she’d ever projected through the Force.

_‘Why did you do that? I was trying to help you, and you decide to repay me by tunneling into my brain?! Do you know what that’s like? I thought my head was going to bloody well explode, you moof-milker!’_

_‘As a matter of fact, I do, since you were the one who burrowed into mine first!’_

Rey nearly jumped out of her skin at the clear sound of Ben’s defensive reply, so close it sounded as if he was speaking right in her ear. Her head jerked backward to look at him in person, heart pounding, but no, there he was, hulking body still on its side on the ground and looking for all the world to be limp and unconscious through the half-destroyed room’s flickering lights and settling dust.

Oh.

So… So _this_ was what Force user conversations were like, then.

 _‘Only because I was trying to get_ ** _you_** _away from my head!’_ she thought back. ‘ _None of this would have happened if you’d kept your damn Force fingers to yourself!’_

Rey tensed, expecting another fighting retort.

She was surprised when, after a pause, Ben only said -- no, _thought_ , and sounded as if it were the hardest thing for him to get out, _‘I’m… sorry. I -- didn’t understand. I was only... trying to understand.’_

It was a small comfort that he sounded as shaken and disconcerted as she felt.

 _‘Understand what, exactly?!’_

Unexpectedly, uncertainty rather than anger blossomed powerfully within him, the seemingly uncharacteristic hesitation as clear as if Rey had felt it herself.

 _‘If you were… who I thought you were,’_ he thought at last. The sound of his voice in her mind was rich and resonant, not hoarse with disuse, and it occurred to Rey that this must be what he sounded like when he wasn’t kept in near isolation for months on end. _‘After that, when you--- when I pushed you out. I didn’t mean to fall into your mind the way I did. I didn't mean to hurt you.’_ His thoughts hitched. _‘I can’t… control it so well. When it comes rushing back like this.’_

Well… Rey at least knew that much was true.

She let out a long breath, trying to rein in her anger. After being verbally attacked by Ben for more than half their earlier conversation, she might have been disinclined to believe his reassurances at all, were it not for the sharp stab of his own self-loathing that accompanied them and felt like a knife in her own stomach, not to mention everything she had learned while she was in his head.

Of a desperately lonely boy who’d only wanted to be accepted. And of all the people who had only believed -- or wanted -- the worst of him.  

Still, her reply was cautious. _‘Who else in Stars’ name would have been doing that, Ruthless Rozu with his electrocution rod? Of course it was me.’_

_‘You make it sound so easy. Believing the best of someone. People don’t just… help me, to be kind. Not like they would you.’_

There were flashes, then, pained snippets of a past that wasn’t hers, of cruel actions and crueller words, and Rey recalled immediately how he had reacted so viscerally to her simple words of kindness moments before the lockdown began -- how _she_ had reacted when Finn had at first infuriated her by dragging her into his desperate flight from the First Order, and then moved her deeply by continuing to come back when no one else had.

With a sigh, she felt her sharp anger at the man somehow still connected to her mind dull as swiftly as it had unsheathed.

 _‘People don’t always help me, either,’_ she pointed out.

 _‘Because you hide it away. If you didn't, every one of them would be inclined to. You. So strong and so bright.’_ His quiet, even voice sounded incredulous and, impossibly, even awed. _‘They’d sense that light in you and be drawn to it like moths to a flame, without realizing that they were speaking to the most openly powerful wielder of the Light Side of the Force they might ever encounter in their lifetimes.’_

Any flattery Rey might have felt by that assessment was quickly overturned by cold dread that cascaded over her like a bucket of ice.

_No… No, no, no._

This wasn’t happening.

This _couldn’t_ be happening.

Decades of hiding. Years of caution, such painstaking caution and restraint in her Force usage that she'd often resorted to punching and kicking to avoid showing a hint of that otherworldly power. She'd even kept it from Finn, her very best friend whom she trusted and loved dearly, and Padmé, who had become almost like her own grandmother. Complete anonymity -- complete safety in secrets and silence.

All of it -- gone in a mere thirty minute period. Because she _cared too much._

_Oh dear Stars… what have I done?_

Her heart raced; she abruptly felt lightheaded, dizzy and sick, and wondered what the officers would do if she leaned over and vomited on the floor this very instant.

Unbidden and currently very much unwanted, Ben’s voice came again then, softer still in her mind, as if he was only murmuring.

_‘No one else knows, do they?’_

Rey pressed her lips together tightly even though they weren’t speaking verbally, shaking, physically shaking.

He knew.

Ben Organa Solo knew she had the Force.

Someone whose mind she could not control, could not will to forget, knew that she was a Force-sensitive, and not only that, but her _full name,_ and her mind, and where she was from and where she was staying, and—

 _‘Despite what people believe about me, I am_ **_not_ ** _someone who would betray that secret.’_

The forceful thought cut off her spiraling panic with an odd, unexpected urgency.

Heart beating unsteadily at an inhuman speed, Rey lifted her head cautiously to look at Ben in person. He was still limp and bound to the chair, head twisted at an angle against the floor -- so close she could have stretched out her leg across the mess of destroyed transparisteel barrier and just managed to toe him.

 _‘Swear it to me, then. On your love for Padmé,’_ she thought fiercely. _‘Swear it.’_

His response was unnerving in its instantaneousness. _‘I swear to you on my love for my grandmother that your secret is safe, Rey. It is_ ** _safe_** _.’_ As if he could sense her gaze, his eyes cracked open slightly, looking up at her through dark, dust-speckled lashes. _‘If you believe nothing else from me, believe that. Please.’_

Unlike his often erratic energy, those words and his presence in her mind felt steady and sure, fierce conviction radiating from the Force surrounding him.

The Force had never lied to her.

And somehow she knew, as sure as the sun would always rise and the moon would always set, that Ben wasn’t lying to her now, either.

She let that raw honesty and strength flow over her, wash away the terrible but not unreasonable fears gripping her muscles.

She was _safe._ Someone else knew, but… her secret was still safe, and so was she.

So was she.

At long last, Rey’s shoulders slumped. **_‘Okay..._** _Okay.’_ In a weak breath of a thought, she breathed tiredly, _‘I believe you.’_

She felt the smallest flicker of surprise, and then sweeping relief that she at first thought was hers; she was still so unsure of what to make of these sensations and feelings that belonged to Ben but impossibly touched her mind as though they were a possession all her own.

Constantly aware of the officers’ presence, she rested her chin on her knees rather than continue to look directly at Ben’s ‘unconscious’ form and fixed her gaze in a non-obvious location just above his head. She saw his eyes shift away from hers as well, but after a hesitation she could actually sense -- and remained silent through -- Ben glanced up at her again.

 _‘You were... right, what you said about me earlier. I know too well the horrors of the entire world learning all that they believe matters about me without my consent. I would never bring that upon someone else. Never.’_ His voice softened. _‘I hope you always stay free, wrench-jockey.’_

The reassurance of those gentle words was unexpectedly powerful, soothing Rey deep in her bones. She might have even thanked him if she herself wasn’t still reeling. Given her lifelong tendency to deflect pain with a smile and deny hardships with positivity, allowing herself to be comforted like this -- that someone was even seeing her vulnerable enough to know she could use some comforting to begin with -- was immensely unfamiliar. But it…

It wasn’t entirely unpleasant or unwelcome, either.

It felt warm, and safe, and… good. Yes -- definitely good. Like something Rey might want to allow a little bit more of into her life.

That it was Ben Solo who was doing it... Well, that made it all the more shocking and confusing and bloody bizarre is what it did. Then again, Rey was learning so much more about Ben Solo than even she had thought there was left to know; like peeling away the paper-thin layers of an onion, or opening a succession of nesting Kashyyk dolls, everything inside was kinder, and steadier, than the brittle shell that encompassed him.

She wiped again beneath her eyes, hoping by some expensive product miracle that the makeup she’d smeared across her face earlier was smudgeproof _and_ waterproof; it was why she usually never wore the rubbish to begin with. _‘Why are you being so nice to me?’_  

To her surprise, weak amusement arose in him. _‘Didn’t you all but demand I be?’_

 _‘Funny, you don’t strike me as someone who always listens to what their betters tell them,’_ she countered in his own words, though without any of the malice with which he’d thrown them at her what seemed like lifetimes ago, now.

As if he too appreciated the irony, the side of his lip curved upward ever so slightly, but his gaze lowered, staring aimlessly at the ground directly in front of him. She could tell clearly that emotions had begun to roil within him, but for the first time, they seemed harder to read, almost as if their mental connection was experiencing some sort of interference.

Quietly, he thought, _‘I… I could ask the same of you. Why help me? Why be kind to me at all?’_

His evasive response disappointed her more than she expected, and made her less inclined to give a straight answer of her own. _‘You moonbrain,’_ she thought with a mix of exasperation and, she was horrified to realize, affection. _‘Not everyone is--’_

“—put him down again. How long has it been?”

In an instant, Ben’s eyes squeezed shut, though he remarkably remained completely limp otherwise.

Rey, on the other hand, went stiff as a board. Her gaze flashed to the guards. They were sitting up and looking over at Ben’s body, scowling.

No. No no no no no. Not again, she _couldn’t watch this again,_ especially not now that they were so connected, not now that she knew how much…

How much he had been hurt already.

She dug her fingers into her legs and forced herself to look away as she contemplated a better plan. The Mandalorian was obviously out -- _not the Mandalorian, not the Mandalorian_ \-- but the Hosnian seemed far more pliable. After twenty-one years, she’d become damn good at Force suggestion; perhaps she could plant a hint of a thought, just the faintest hint, and then order him to forget about it immediately after—

 _‘Don’t_.’

Ben’s voice was simultaneously gentle and forceful in her head, an order framed as a caress. _‘They’re trained to recognize Force suggestion. He’ll sense it, and if they think I’m unconscious, they’ll know it’s coming from you. Forget about me; I’m nothing. Protect yourself.’_

Rey almost rolled her eyes. His grandmother’s heart, indeed; this man was more self-sacrificing than Padmé had _ever_ let on. _‘It’s a little hard to forget about you when they’ve been repeatedly torturing you in front of me!’_ she thought back fiercely.

The Mandalorian -- _damn it, why did it have to be him;_ ** _why?_** \-- dragged himself to his feet, scowling deeply, and snapped out the electrified head of his Z6.

Lightning-like electricity crackled from it, sparks flying.

Rey tensed with dread as he limped forward (or was it Ben doing that?), pulse thundering in her ears, as if it wasn’t _him_ that was about to be inundated with the maximum voltage of the Alliance’s most brutal riot baton, but her.

 _‘Rey.’_ Why was it that her name sounded so natural, so easy coming from him, as if he’d been saying it to her all her life? _‘Rey, don’t… don’t look at it, then. Please don’t look. Rey—’_

The pressure built in her chest or his, Rey didn’t know anymore, until she couldn’t stand it.

She leapt to her feet, leashing every urge in her body to Force suggest; instead, she quickly pieced together the man’s name from Phasma’s earlier briefing and willed the sound of absolute authority into her voice alone.

“Officer Rozu, I _command_ you to _stop.”_

She said it not in Alliance Basic but in his native Mando'a, a language she knew he would not ignore, _could_ not ignore... not now that he would realize he was no longer simply an anonymous guard, and that she had understood every foul word he’d uttered about her and Ben from the moment he’d first opened his mouth.

And he didn’t.

The sparking, sizzling Z6 paused a moment before it touched Ben’s neck.

The Mandalorian’s electric green eyes locked with hers, incredulous and furious.

Rey met his gaze, unafraid, and drew herself to her full height. “You have forgotten _who I am,”_ she said with barely-restrained fury, still in his native tongue. _“_ I represent _that man’s_ grandmother, Padmé Amidala of the Royal House of Naboo, Senator Emeritus of the Republic and Alliance Senates, former Queen, and one of the most beloved and influential politicians in the world. _”_ She was shaking, shaking with rage, her voice strengthened by the fierce conviction that every word she was saying was right and just, _damn_ whatever consequences might come of this to her. “If you continue to electrocute him when he is clearly unconscious and not currently a threat, she and every political ally she has will come after you and this Detention Center for egregious prisoner abuse, and she will win, and _you_ will be out of a job here and possibly anywhere else, ever again. Is that really worth this _momentary thrill?”_ She ground out the last words hatefully.

The room went utterly silent.

She felt pure stupefaction -- Ben’s -- radiate through the Force like it was an extension of herself.

The Mandalorian regarded her, his dark expression shadowed and unreadable. But Rey had experienced struggles for dominance before and knew what was involved; didn’t for a moment break eye contact with the officer.

Then, like a panther prowling toward a more interesting, challenging prey, he slowly stepped over Ben’s body, boots crunching on broken transparisteel and metal. The Z6 still crackled and buzzed in his hands like twenty hives of enraged wasps.

He didn’t stop walking until he was standing inches in front of her.

In the background of her perception, Ben’s astoundment spiked with a sharp pulse of dread that was swiftly followed by an icy, paralyzing fear and an equally hot burst of rage; combined, the powerful emotions threatened to overwhelm Rey, but they were _his_ and not hers, she told herself fiercely as the shock baton sizzled angrily a heartbeat from her chest. She already knew what it felt like, and she _did not care._

She held her ground, and the Mandalorian’s gaze, her own fierce and determined.

She would not stand by and watch Ben be hurt again.

She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.

Until she noticed with her own shock of dread that, in the Force beyond, the dark energy swirling around Ben had swelled into a violent storm.

 ** _‘Don’t,_** _or all this will be for nothing!’_ she projected forcefully.

To her (minute) relief, the energy instantly froze: not receding, but not advancing, either.

It felt like hours before the Mandalorian cocked his head, mesmerically pale eyes still locked upon hers like a snake coiling to strike. His expression now was openly loathing, and Rey wondered if he could sense her revulsion of him as clearly as she could sense his of her.

He leaned toward her ear, so close Rey could feel the stickiness of his breath.

“Then you’d better hope your precious Sithspawn scum stays down, hadn’t you,  _skazz_ serpent,” he breathed in Mando’a, voice low and threatening. Unlike Ben’s soft voice, this man’s made her skin crawl, and she immediately wanted to scrub the very _presence_ of him from her body like she’d already had to do only the night before.

Hatred seethed within her with such power it surely belonged to her and Ben both.

At last, the Mandalorian took a step back and deactivated the riot baton. Then he twisted back toward her and spat at her feet.  “Protecting a dark sorcery demon? Vader's Force-damned heir? You’re as disgusting as _it_ is.”

That sounded exactly like the absolute bantha fodder the teenagers from Ben’s memory had flung at him all those years ago, who had accused Ben of being a monster before _they_ were the ones who’d committed a monstrous act.

“You’re wrong about him,” she said at his back. “Every one of you is wrong about him.”

Almost to his partner’s side across the room, the Mandalorian stopped. He glanced at her, sneer on his face. “If that’s true, _skazz,_ then it’s you the odds are against, isn’t it?”

Rey grit her teeth, and her jaw ached from how tightly she’d been clenching it.

Abruptly, the Mandalorian’s hand shot to his earpiece. He all but snarled, _“Thirty!”_ and slammed his palm onto the wall comm, snapping into it in a much lower voice now that he knew that Rey could understand him. The Hosnian was sitting on the floor, holding his bleeding leg and looking between them, wide-eyed.

Rey wasn’t certain if the relief that flooded through her belonged to Ben or her.

Thankfully, neither officer noticed, through Rey certainly did, that dark, gaping fissures stretched across the chains securing him to the chair.

Each of his cuffs had cracked straight through.

_‘Rey…’_

The low rumble of Ben’s voice was breathed in silence, relayed through the impossibility of the Force communication clearly still open between them.

No one had ever spoken her name like that before.

Almost like...

Like it was a prayer.

Another startling, primal shock of heat flared low in her belly.

Her rigid shoulders at last slumped, and she let out a long breath, sinking back to the ground. She buried her face back in her knees, clenching her hands, only to find her fingers were shaking.

Disaster. That could have ended in disaster in so many ways, but… it had worked.

She couldn’t believe that it had actually worked--  

_‘You shouldn’t have done that.’_

Though Ben's quiet tone was nowhere near the accusing snarl of their earliest communications, Rey’s ire blazed.

 _‘Don’t tell me what I should or should not do; yes, I absolutely should have,’_ she thought back fiercely.

She felt his emotions surge and waver, but they were again harder to read, like the interference was getting worse. _‘Then… thank you, wrench-jockey.’_ This much, she could sense that he genuinely meant-- felt his surprise and discomfort in relaying those words, as if he was unfamiliar in saying them.

Faintly, he repeated, ‘ _Thank you.’_

She relaxed as quickly as she’d tensed, and finally allowed herself to freely feel the relief flowing between them.

Wrench-jockey. That moniker seemed as though it was going to stick, and she surprisingly didn’t hate it. It actually felt accurate, and was only one of a handful of true nicknames she’d ever been given (she didn’t count whatever bullies, both children and adults, had called her as a child).

But this time, Ben had said it so… so _tenderly_ , rather than teasing.

It made her think that maybe, just maybe, whatever this was she was feeling…

He was feeling it, too.

She noticed then that his swirling energy had once more begun to seethe and spike with turbulence, but unlike their almost total melding of thoughts and emotions only minutes ago, the reasons for this were… _walled off_. It seemed to Rey that if she pressed hard enough, she might be able to get past it, but she’d only just experienced the agonizing unpleasantness of having her own mind pressed into, and didn’t particularly want to do that to Ben -- again, it would seem.

 _‘What is it?’_ she thought quickly.

It took him a moment to respond; when he did, his thoughts were atypically rushed and open, tumbling into her mind. ‘ _Rey, let's… let's get out of here. These restraints, those officers, that door… they’re nothing. Not to us.’_

Rey’s heart plummeted. _‘Ben...’_

_‘You know the way, and together we're stronger than anything they can throw at us. The majority of them are stuck in place like this until the lockdown ends anyway. When we get to the street we can… we can disappear; go somewhere they’ll never find us, and--’_

_‘No, no, stop, we won't get to the street, and they will find us, they_ ** _will_** _!’_ Rey thought fiercely before his imagination could jump any further. ‘ _Ben, listen to yourself! Get out of here, and then what? Even if you did make it down, they will_ ** _never_** _stop hunting you; you'll be running your entire life! I refuse to be a part of that, but since I'm here right now, your grandmother and I will be investigated and followed and possibly even blamed for your escape for the rest of our lives, too! I know you wouldn't want that for her!’_

When that was met with a roiling, tumultuous silence, Rey said more gently, ‘ _Don't you have only three… a little more than three years left? You're already nearly through it, Ben. I_ ** _know_** _it’s hard, I_ ** _know_** _this place is a nightmare, but if you finish, you can walk out of here free.’_

She could feel his immediate certainty around the idea that not even then would he be free -- that he would never be, no matter what he did, or didn’t, do.

A heavy sort of finality hung around him.

In spite of that -- in spite of whether or not that was true -- Rey silently pleaded with him not to go this way. He thought she’d been fortunate to remained undiscovered, but that had only been because she had lived a nomadic, isolated life making herself as small and invisible as possible, running, hiding and constantly filled with the fear of detection; until she’d come to Varykino, it had been exhausting, and never-ending, and so inexpressibly lonely, and she didn’t wish that on anyone, _anyone,_ especially not him.

She could understand -- _Stars,_ could she understand! -- why he wanted to do this, but if he tried to escape now, it would ultimately be so much worse for Padmé, for her, for _him_ , and for everyone Ben encountered on the run --  of this much, Rey was certain.

He would never be able to see Varykino again. He would never be able to see his grandmother again. Everything he’d ever known would be over, and while that might seem appealing, there were some aspects of it that she suspected would also be devastating for him.

In the seconds that followed her wordless argument, Rey held her breath, heart in her throat. His immense power was coiled, indecisive but poised, like a massif about to spring, and her fingers clutched at her legs, tense and ready to spring into action themselves.  

If he moved now, would she stand aside? Or try to stop him? No, she wouldn’t do that -- not after seeing he’d been as much of a slave to Snoke as she had been to some of her foster ‘families.’ She would not impinge upon his freedom…

But she would not abide his decisions impinging upon hers, either.

 ** _‘Please_ ** _don’t do this, Ben. Please…’_

To her immense, unspeakable relief, his stormy, pulsating turmoil of preparedness slumped then. His frayed emotions shuddered, and she sensed more than heard his long, tired sigh.

‘ _You're right… You're right.’_ The non-vocalized sound of Ben in her mind was as exhausted as she'd ever heard him. _‘I just… for a moment, I was…’_

He didn’t finish the thought, but she heard it anyway, faint and forlorn and utterly defeated:

_...stupid enough to hope._

The fraught tension in Rey’s braced muscles and churning stomach swiftly released.

Her heart, though -- her heart still ached for him.

She shook her head, even though the conversation wasn’t face-to-face. _‘You weren't. Stupid to want to get out of here. Of course you weren’t.’_ Compassionately, she stretched her awareness through to his hand, squeezing it gently. ‘ _I'm sorry there isn't another way, Ben. I can't even imagine how terrible it is here for you. I wish I…’_

... ** _could_** _help you, somehow._ She didn't finish the thought aloud, but her stomach knotted when it occurred to her that he, too, had probably heard it anyway _._

After a few seconds, she felt a small, hesitant curl of gratitude lightly brush her energy at his hand -- a single cold tendril of the Force, like the ghostly fingers that had initially grazed her mind. Rey watched it retreat quickly, as if expecting her to push it away.

She didn’t want to push it away.

Except for Padmé, Ben had been so alone his entire life, just like she had been, were it not for Finn and then Padmé and Varykino.

But he didn’t have to be, right now.

Neither of them did.

Holding her breath, she extended a warm tendril of her own where his had hovered only a moment before. Open. Inviting.

A stunned glimmer of pure wonder flickered through the strange new wall around Ben’s thoughts and emotions -- a blockade she was becoming increasingly convinced was Ben’s own doing. (Could she block her thoughts from him, too? There must have been a way.)

She suspected he hadn’t wanted her to feel that, but the power of the emotions that had slipped through his defenses nonetheless warmed her all the way to her chest, and gave her the confidence to wait.

A moment passed, then two and three.

Slowly, that small sliver of Ben’s Force power extended toward her again.

Tentatively, the tendrils of their energy entwined, like two shoots of a climbing vine twining together.

Rey's breath caught.

It felt as right and balanced now as that beautiful energy of twilight she’d experienced after she’d held him earlier, calmed him at the end of his explosive panic. Like the cool mists of Varykino at dawn. Like… Like sureness, and safety. Like _home._

It also felt like pure electricity of a very different kind, though just as hot and piercing and R’iia-damned torturous.

Her breathing increased rapidly, or maybe it was _him_ that was breathing rapidly; suddenly, the already-suffocating visitation room felt stifling as well. Some reckless, impulsive part of her abruptly wanted to grasp his energy with an entire Force hand and not just a Force finger and see what that did to her, and she gritted her teeth to restrain the overwhelmingly powerful urge.

Stars, it was just a touch -- and not even a real touch, but a _Force-touch_ ; why was it so impossibly hard for her lungs to function properly?

Heart thundering in her ears, Rey swiftly decided that this was as good a damn time as any to figure out how to block her own thoughts from Ben if she wasn’t by some miracle doing it already, and scrabbled to breathe, to _focus._

 _‘What were you planning on doing? When I was yelling at that officer, and I told you to stop?’_ she asked hastily, desperately trying to shift any attention from what she was attempting to do.

A confused hesitation. _‘W-W— What?’_

His own noticeably struggling, raging emotions delayed any further response.

That was fine.

_She could do this, she could do this._

With enough focus, she could sense Ben’s presence in her mind -- not everywhere all at once, as it had initially seemed, but a concrete, definite entity in a very distinct area. Eyes narrowed in concentration, she thought of a solid sandstone barricade around it stretching as high as the sky, with herself and every single thought she was having about him safely on the other side; the construction flowed out of her and raced upward, yard by yard --  

 _‘I... I wasn’t thinking... much of anything then,_ ’ Ben admitted at last, thoughts still sounding a bit strangled. _‘That son of a kriff was threatening you, and I just… reacted.’_

Rey’s lips parted slightly.

_‘...Oh.’_

In the years since her initial irritation about Finn’s aggravating protectiveness of her (given that she was usually the one who ended up protecting _him_ ), she had come to realize the most important part of the sentiment — when the person involved wasn’t being pig-headed about it — was that it was an expression of caring more than anything else. She had quickly become grateful that people existed who worried about her enough to want to make sure she was safe.

In the course of a single hour, Ben Solo’s instinctive reaction to her had gone from full-on dislike to being worried enough about her to want to make sure she was safe with the full power of the Force he possessed, damn the risk to him.

Her stomach flipped _._

And just like that, there went all the bloody progress she’d only just made.

 _Wall,_ she thought furiously, forcing the imagery to again appear as if it were completely real. _Wall, wall, wall!_

When Rey finished the visualization, her mental self leaned against the seemingly solid edifice, panting. She had never been this attracted to anyone in her entire life. There was no way she was going to stand by and allow this bizarre Force connection to wave a flashing neon sign letting him _know_ that.

No thought or feeling about Ben Solo would cross that wall unless she allowed it, she instructed firmly.

Nearby, she heard Ben’s breaths now, heavy and irregular. Truthfully, it was a little gratifying -- and more than a little relieving -- to know that she wasn’t the only one struggling, that he -- he _most definitely_ felt it, too.

What did that mean for them, then?

While the officers behind them continued to listen into earpieces and the Mandalorian raged at the delay in containing the situation in Block 385 that had spilled over to 387 -- and that was about to spill out of Visitation Room 12, you fragging skugs! -- Rey and Ben became still, bare in the safety of the presence of each other, in this strange, bewildering connection, invisible yet so strong between them.

She hadn’t let go of his tendril of energy.

He hadn’t let go of hers, either.

 _‘Force -- Force Suppression darts today are impossibly small now, and they can be very difficult to dodge when you don't expect them or meet a full platoon,’_ Ben suddenly offered, thoughts still wavering unsteadily. ‘ _There's only a — few subtle indicators in the Force, and they’re easily missed. If you feel comfortable enough, you could ask Maz to have her contacts find an old model Suppression gun and some empty cartridges, so you can learn how to read them. To... To keep yourself safe.’_

Rey wondered if he’d seen that while he’d been in her mind -- her unfamiliarity with and nervousness around all of the methods of trapping Force-sensitives, and her desire to learn so she could get over that fear.

That he’d then offered the insight to her freely felt… comforting, like everything else about him that felt truthful and caring and _steady_. The only honest thing in this building, in this entire city.

‘ _Thank you. I'll try that.’_ She hesitated. _‘I’ve… I’ve wondered. Of anyone, if Maz could tell,’_ she admitted. _‘It took me a little while to figure out she had the Force, or some version of it, and I’ve been so careful since, but the way she looks at me sometimes…’_

A soft, halting chuckle in her ear, tentative but warm. _‘I know that look. Like she could write a treatise on your entire soul. It can be unnerving.’_ He paused. _‘Knowing her, if she's already looking at you like that, she probably suspects. She doesn’t use the Force like you and I do, but she’s very sensitive to it in many other ways.’_

Rey let out a long breath, knocking her forehead against her knees. _‘Can I trust her with_ ** _this?_** _I adore her, but...’_

Ben took his time responding. _‘I think… only you’ll be able to tell what feels safe to you when the moment comes,_ ’ he thought slowly. _‘I will say she stood by my grandmother, and me, it sounds like, through everything. No one else did that. I can count on three fingers the number of people I trust, but if I had to, I’d… I’d probably include her, too.’_

Rey wondered who those three fingers belonged to. Padmé, certainly, was one. His parents, perhaps? But Ben had mentioned they were estranged—

 _‘I was wrong about you, and my grandmother was entirely right.’_ His quiet thought startled her, and she wished desperately she could look at him as he continued, _‘You do have the heart of a Naberrie and the strength of an Amidala. Beyond Maz, there is no other person on the planet I would trust with my grandmother than you.’_

In a heartbeat, her eyes stung and swam with emotion.

She certainly hadn’t been seeking validation from him, had never expected validation from him. Receiving it anyway, now that she _knew_ him…

It meant so much, and she knew it would mean the world to Padmé, too.

 _‘Are you sure you aren’t just saying that because you think you owe me?’_ she thought, blinking back tears.

His reply was instantaneous, and fervent. _‘I'm not. Although I do owe you. More than I can say.’_

For the first time, Rey was grateful he’d masked his feelings; being inundated with the sudden intensity to his thoughts, of the emotions surrounding him would have made this conversation even more difficult to navigate.

She was already hoping her own walls held.

 _‘You don’t,’_ she countered firmly. _‘I know what it’s like to feel indebted to people, and I don’t like making other people feel indebted to me. You don’t owe me anything for this, Ben.’_ Then she frowned. _‘For putting up with your condescending nonsense for a year and your stuck-up pugnaciousness when I got here — maybe that.’_

She could feel the slight smile through his thoughts — a smile, and a sizeable amount of guilt. _‘Then that, wrench-jockey, is an indebtedness I willingly enter.’_

The thought was warm, tender in a way that no one — well, no one who was a man — had ever spoken to her before. Rey liked how it sounded. She liked how it felt. She liked how it made her heart quicken and race like no other person did — knowing that what she was feeling might not be unrequited.

 _Stars,_ she was a stupid, stupid idiot… but she liked Ben more and more with each passing minute.

 _‘Rey…’_ He hesitated. A flicker of nervousness burst through his careful wall. _‘I— I hope you’ll let Varykino be the home you’ve always wanted, with my grandmother. You… deserve to have that. You deserve_ ** _more_** _than that. In spite of my stuck-up stupidity.’_

She almost laughed aloud, sinuses choked with emotion. _‘Finally admitting to it, are you?’_

A short, soft exhale of breath, as if Ben too had silently withheld a slightly embarrassed laugh. _‘I’m not sure I can fairly deny it. As much as I currently wish I was neither stuck up nor stupid._ _'_ His wry voice in her mind quieted, then. _'Especially not to you.'_  

The thought was at once so gentle and regretful it unnerved her and left her reeling, and shot her straight back to what he'd said before she'd opted to tease him.

He knew how badly she’d wanted a home — a family. He’d seen that much while he’d been in her head.

Perhaps he hadn’t seen… everything else.

 _‘Thank you. For what you said about Varykino,’_ she thought earnestly, and then added humor to avoid discussing it with him further. _‘It’s rather nice to know you I can exist in your familial home without you wanting to kill me anymore.’_

Rey sensed the slight tenseness that had entered Ben's energy relax. ‘ _I never wanted to kill you. Even the scaly-skinned Huttese assassin version of you.’_ He paused. _‘Well… maybe that one._ ’ She held back another laugh, but a sudden spike of worry -- his -- stayed her amusement. _‘My grandmother…_ ** _is_** _recovering, isn’t she?’_

_‘Yes.’_ Her Force hand squeezed his with reassurance. _‘I won’t lie to you, she’s… aging, Ben. With that comes challenges. But she’s strong, and she’s facing them, and her love for what we’re doing with Varykino and for you is keeping her spirits high. She will get through this.’_

His soft, energetic press back was one of silent thankfulness.

Her stomach churned again, and she triple-checked the reinforcements along her own wall.

R’iia’s breath. She and Ben Bantha Brain Solo were having a bloody Force hand-holding session.

_With their minds._

And there was a very good possibility that neither of them was going to let go until this entire lockdown was over — whenever that would be. After that… Rey didn’t know, and didn’t want to let herself think about it.

 _'Is it always like this?’_ she thought to him instead.

Something in Ben’s now-hidden emotions seemed to catch. _‘Is what always like this?’_

_‘When two Force-sensitives communicate mentally. Is it always so… intense?’_

As if ‘intense’ could even begin to describe what this was. Even though she’d only met him an hour ago, she felt like she’d known him for _years._

When he replied, his thoughts were even, careful. _‘It’s… not. I’ve… never experienced anything like this.’_

Rey told herself that response had everything to do with the Force being the strange and unfathomable mystery that it was, and nothing to do with her. Still, her heart beat faster at the idea this was an anomaly, painstakingly careful as she was to avoid standing out in any way, shape or form, and she didn’t even need to ask Ben to continue for him to sense her interest and go on.

 _‘Some limited communication_ ** _is_** _possible, especially between relatives or longtime partners or friends, but even then, it’s usually never this easy or this... this all-encompassing. It took most of the —’_ for a moment, his thoughts floundered, and then he must have decided to plunge forward with it, _‘—Knights of Ren a solid year to be able to push even short comm bytes to each other.’_

Rey shook her head in disbelief. _‘Then why is this happening? These aren’t short comms; I can feel the_ ** _heart_** _of you, Ben, like you’re right here, inside me, like we’re part of the same skin.’_

For a moment, what she could sense of Ben reeled, as if he was as unnerved by this as she was. ‘ _I— I don’t know. Proximity? I’ve never been this close to someone… someone like you. Even without formal training, you have more control than...’_

 _Than I do_ was unspoken.

His frustration welled up as if it was her own. _‘So often, the Force works in ways I don’t understand.’_

Rey was surprised by that. ‘ _I’ve always felt like I do understand it. But not right now.’_ It was refreshing, and nice -- Stars, it was so nice -- to actually be able to talk about the Force to someone else who could not only listen, but _understand. ‘I mean, I — I felt them electrocute you like they were doing it to_ ** _me._** _That… that can’t be normal, can it?_ **’**

His startled response was hushed but sharp. _‘What?’_

The more she thought about it — about just _how many times_ they’d electrocuted him, on high, and in the span of a mere half-hour — the more it made her angry. Rey was no stranger to abuse, or the attempt of it, and she knew now that Ben had lived a life full of it — much more than even she ever had.

She had ultimately been able to escape it. He hadn’t. He was still trapped in it, and would be for at least four more years.

 _‘Rey?’_ he said again, sounding worried. His energy and his emotions had oddly begun to flare again, swirling and erratic.

These officers, those teenagers, Snoke, and R’iia knew whoever else. They had all electrocuted him in their own horrible, malicious ways, over and over. Even she had made that mistake earlier, thinking he was plotting his escape before the explosion, rather than barely hanging on.

And always it was _Ben_ who was faulted. Condemned. Hated. Imprisoned.

For doing nothing but trying to survive the places he’d found himself, just as Rey had.

It was so unfair.

 _‘I am not without blame,’_ he suddenly thought, heavy and quiet — his emotional turmoil momentarily leveling. _‘The things I did, with the First Order… it was me who did them. Even to protect my grandmother, I made that choice… that her life was worth more than all of theirs.’_

Rey swiftly realized some of her thoughts must have slipped through her barrier.

‘ _You know, I’ve always admired you for not making excuses for that, not even in your letters to Padmé,’_ she thought, and meant that sincerely. _‘But even so, Ben… I’m_ ** _sorry.’_**

The lone tendril of his churning energy still wrapped around hers abruptly tightened.

The rest of him went as still as a stone.

For a moment, all Rey could hear was the low, heated conversation of the two corrections officers across the room.

 _‘For what?’_

The thought was hushed yet demanding, sounding torn between surprise, bewilderment, and half-terrified anticipation.

She shook her head slightly against her knees, lips pressed tightly together. _‘That no one beyond Padmé has ever given you the benefit of the doubt. Saying ‘it’s their loss’ doesn’t negate how much pain you’ve experienced because of it. And I’m not saying this to pity you; I can_ ** _feel_** _you, Ben — I can feel how much it hurts you, with every breath you take. And I am so sorry.’_

For another solitary instant — and only that long — Ben remained completely paralyzed.

Then a torrent of astonishment, _aching_ longing, fear and unspeakable grief surged across the small chasm between them as if his tightly constructed wall had abruptly come crashing down.

Rey gasped, the sound muffled; tears flooded her eyes at the sheer strength of the emotion overflowing from him, and she didn’t even need to look at him to know he’d started crying, too.

Immediately, she peeked over her knees, glancing toward the officers, but both were thankfully reapplying makeshift bandages and not even looking their way. Reassured of that, she briefly shifted her gaze to Ben; he was trembling so faintly she wouldn’t have been able to tell if she hadn't been staring at him hard, but he wasn’t just crying, he was _weeping_ , jaw clenched and eyes squeezed shut as if that could stop the cascade of tears streaming from beneath them toward his left ear.

So much care and concern for him welled inside Rey that she didn’t hesitate for a moment. Stretching out another thread of her awareness, she gently slipped it beneath his head, cradling the side of his long face in a solid hand of Force energy.

Ben flinched at the touch, confusion and dread flaring along their connection.

 _‘It’s alright. It’s me, it’s just me,’_ she soothed, shifting his head ever-so-slightly from the painful angle it rested against the floor, and Rey knew from his thoughts that no one outside his grandmother had ever touched him like this -- so gently and with so much care.

Just as quickly, she sensed his sudden shame as if she were living it, shame and embarrassment that one of his greatest defects --his tears -- was on clear display for, of all people, her.

Rey almost shook her head; hastily catching herself, she quickly turned before it became obvious to anyone else that she was looking at Ben.

 _‘It’s alright. It’s alright to cry. Do not ever be ashamed of that,’_ she thought fiercely, remembering how the gold-cloaked Supreme Leader had told him otherwise, and probably had for years. _‘Caring, and feeling… those aren’t weaknesses, Ben. Those are **strengths.**_ _Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of complete bantha fodder.'  
_

He visibly gulped back a sob, struggling to breathe and remain as motionless as possible. _‘They’re… not.’_ His once-steady presence in her mind had become like jagged glass, broken and shattered. _'Always hurts… so_ ** _much…’_**

Rey wished to the Force she could disagree with him, but, as if they had become one, she felt the force of Ben’s emotional agony and energetic turmoil and physical pain inside her as if it were her own, and it did:

It hurt _so much._

She was absolutely going to have to figure out a way to manage this in the future so she wouldn't be affected so strongly, but for now, she would simply be here with him.

 _‘I know,’_ she managed to think, her eyes burning with tears, and she wished that she could hold him in comfort, actually hold him, not like this, but with real arms, against real skin. _‘I feel it, too.’_

There was a tremor in the very Force itself, and what Rey could only describe as pure heartbreak pierced her chest like a knife. Pushing his face more into her invisible hand, as if trying to hide what she could see of it, Ben began to cry harder, wet face shuddering with narrowly-repressed sobs. His thoughts, not meant for her but heard clearly anyway, seemed confused, an echo of hers:

_‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry…’_

Rey squeezed her eyes shut, silently murmuring gentle reassurances to him, and he choked in several shallow, silent gasps, his shoulders shuddering.

_‘Have — to stop— they’ll — see—‘_

She glanced at the correction officers; it was true, they’d finished with their wrappings and were looking tense, bored and annoyed, which was never a good combination.

Rearranging her scarf around her head as a cover, Rey shifted to look at Ben from the corner of her eye. _‘Ben… can I…?’_

She didn’t need to voice her thought at all for him to understand it (or for her to know he did). For a moment, he only froze, but then she sensed rather than saw or heard his wordless affirmation.

Gently, Rey used another arm of her energy to wipe the evidence of his tears from around his swollen eyes and the side of his face, horrifically aware of how Snoke had done almost the same thing and cognizant of using everything in her power to ensure her touch felt nothing like his might have.

_‘Never. You’d — never — feel like him.’_

Ben’s voice. Steadier now. Exhausted, worryingly lifeless, but… steady. Though his tears had stopped, he was still breathing rapidly, his tormented emotions surging but far less tangible than they’d been a minute before.

His wall was going back up.

Even still, the turbulent energy that was still partially entwined with hers was palpably growing swiftly — darkening, billowing, filled with resistance and dread and so much grief.

The ice of foreboding crawled down her back.

In the calm his retreating psyche left in its wake, Rey found she could think more clearly.

This — This _couldn’t_ be only from the apology she’d given him. It had been earnest and moving, sure, but this — this reaction was something else entirely.

There had to be something she was missing, something even more powerful that she wasn’t understanding.

What—?

As if someone had grasped the fingers of her own hand and pried them away, Ben suddenly disentangled himself from her tendrils of the Force, and her very mind itself was suddenly pushed backward. ‘ _We have to_ ** _stop_** _this.’_

Rey gasped, the sharp intake of breath muted against the fabric of her scarf.

The lingering imprint of his pain and turmoil — of Ben _himself_ — vanished entirely.

Eyes wide, she uncertainly stretched the Force back toward him. Had she hurt him accidentally, somehow? _‘Ben… What’s wrong? Did— Did something—?’_

Her efforts slammed up against a solid barrier. _‘No—_ ** _No._** _’_ His once-gentle voice now sounded as cold and detached as when she’d first walked into the visitation room. _‘Get away from me. Rey, you have to stay away from me. Out of my head, out of my letters, out of my life. Do you understand?’_

She blinked in bewilderment, almost scoffed at how out of left field and completely insane his statement was. **_‘No._** _What in Stars’ name are you talking about?’_

Rey saw his energy thrash and flare. _‘I mean I_ ** _never_** _want to see you again. I cannot make that any clearer.’_

She couldn’t sense the truth to his statement. Couldn’t sense the lie in it.

She couldn’t feel him _at all._

Her heart plummeted like a boulder to her stomach. _**‘** **W**_ ** _hat?_** _I — I thought we were — friends, we were — Ben!’_

Rey focused, desperately trying to see past the swiftly rising wall of blackness that met her where their mutual energy had once flowed freely. But the only emotion she could barely grasp at, faintly flowing through some lingering crack in his fortress-like defenses, was pure anguish.

She shook her head in confoundment, tears again searing her eyes. _‘Why are you doing this? I can sense your regre— You’re deliberately pushing me away,’_ she realized at once.

When he didn’t respond, a response in itself, she wracked her brain, thoughts racing. _‘Is this about your loth-cats? That anyone or anything you care about gets hurt, or worse?’_

Silence met her.

 _‘You know that isn’t true,’_ she protested, determined that she was _not_ going to lose him, too. _‘Your grandmother’s still alive!’_

This drew a single thought, flung at her through the gaping void between them. _‘At what cost? Is that a risk you’re willing to take to be connected to the_ ** _reviled_** _grandson of Darth Vader?’_

He may as well have stabbed a knife in her chest — or her back. _“Ben, stop it! This is completely ridiculous; you are more than your family’s legacy, and I am not another object to be protected like your grandmother! I am fully capable of protecting myself no matter whose company I choose to keep; I don’t need you or_ ** _anyone_** _else to do that for me!’_

_‘Everyone thinks that. Until they can’t.’_

_‘Maybe some of them_ ** _can,_** _you stupid, stubborn moonbrain!’_ She pounded at that all but solid wall even as it closed, even as it felt like a piece of herself was being ripped away though she’d known Ben Solo for only an hour, and it at once terrified her and wrecked her — how losing this connection to him felt like it might sever her to the very bone. ‘ _Please, Ben, please don’t go this way—‘_

 _‘No, no — let_ ** _go_ **_of this, Rey! I already told you, keep the hell_ _away from me. I don’t ever want to see you, I don’t ever want to hear from you, I don’t ever want to feel you in my head. Stay with my grandmother as long as you like, but don’t come near me again!’_

 _‘Ben!’_ she screamed—

But the link between them disconnected as if it’d been cut clean through with a knife.

Rey gasped, tears streaming down her face. She buried her head in her scarf, praying the officers didn’t notice, every pore in her body reeling and shaking and struggling to breathe.

They’d become friends. They’d become friends and fought and comforted and shared truths that no one else had seen, truths and memories and mutual suffering and pain, their energy melding into a warm, wonderful hybrid that had felt like home. They’d laughed and cried and held each other; she’d _bared her soul_ to him, and felt like every part of her, including the Force-sensitive — _especially_ the Force-sensitive — had been fully accepted.

She’d bared her soul to him.

And he’d abandoned her. 

Like everyone always did.

Distantly, Rey heard several things happen in very rapid succession:

The locks on each of the interview room’s twin exits thudded loudly, unbolting.

The correction officers let out non-too-subtle shouts and curses of relief.

One of them — probably the Mandalorian — snapped out his Z6 and shocked Ben once, although this time, the sound of electricity lasted only briefly. This time, no terrible shock prodded into her back.

This time, Rey felt nothing.

Within ten seconds, she heard the doors burst open, sensed at least twenty other people pour into the room, the sound of exclamations and shouted reports and a soft _pffst- pffst- pffst_ of something nearly silent and definitely small being shot through the air at high velocity.

And one person approaching her directly.

“Ms. Random? Ms. Random.”

Rey looked up numbly.

Captain Phasma stood — towered — above her, holding out a hand. “Come with me now, please.”

Her pale eyes looked sympathetic. Which was good, Rey thought distantly. It meant the woman would believe her, when she told them Ben hadn’t meant it — what he’d done to the room.

Had he really meant what he’d done to her?

Rey stood and wiped at her face, wincing as pain shot through her knees from her prolonged crouch. When Phasma inquired as to any injuries, some part of her wanted to break down into tears again and cry ‘my soul,’ but she forced herself to smile weakly, nod. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”

She glanced to the right, but there were at least fifteen fully armored - and armed — officers crowded around Ben now, their bulletproof vests forming a solid wall of black that blocked any view of him.

Like the barricade in his mind.

Rey sighed heavily, turning to follow Captain Phasma from the room. 

And then she left Ben Solo, like he had left her.

Like almost everyone they’d loved had left them both.

A very small part of her brain she’d never known had needed filling felt cold and empty. The sandstone wall she’d built — still erected high around nothing at all. 

___

**_Present Day_ **

___

 

Rey stared down at the mostly blank piece of paper beneath her hand, the bit of remaining mac ’n cheese in her bowl now ice cold and practically solid. BeeBee had given up any attempt at playing and had collapsed, snoring, on the floor next to her, small feet twitching every few seconds in an energetic dream.

Without realizing it, her fingers had automatically moved up to hold the smooth stone of the rudimentary necklace she’d made herself the first month she’d struggled to survive in the Tatooine Desert after she’d run away from the last foster home she would ever have. The small rock had been ugly, colorless, but she’d still been drawn to it, and she could swear to the Force it had helped her remember her own power and strength at the greatest depths of her momentary despair.

She’d attached it to an adjustable string and had always worn it beneath her clothing since. It was already warm beneath her fingers as she considered the message she wanted to send to Ben.

As if it were only yesterday, Rey could still hear the low, resonant murmur of Naboo on his tongue, the warmth and comfort of his singular energy, the upward curve of his small, teasing smile.

She still felt his rejection of the very soul of her as if it were only yesterday, too.

 _She hadn’t deserved that._ That much, Rey knew with absolute resolve. Ben had been free to be as much of a stupidly self-sacrificing moonbrain as he wanted, but once they’d become as entwined as they’d been, however that had happened, it wasn’t okay that _she_ had been dragged into the sacrificial process, too.

Even with denial, with positive thinking, with memory suppression and every coping technique she’d learned throughout her lifetime, it had taken her _months_ to find her equilibrium.

Rey never wanted to experience anything like that again. She’d even considered more than once never letting another person have that much power over her emotional balance again, but she’d eventually concluded that that wasn’t healthy, either. No — _she_ needed even stronger mental boundaries, more responsive and resilient shields.

So she’d switched her meditations and taken up new forms of Force training — ones that she hadn’t even known were possible until she’d melded minds with Ben.

Time had passed, and she moved on.

Except in small moments like this.

Rey picked up the pen.

_Dear Ben._

It was brief, and smudged with something orange that had probably once been a macaroni by the time she was finished. She talked about how much she knew he loved his grandmother and how often Padmé had spoken of Ben in those final days of agonizing over her decision to leave Varykino. She said she was sorry he missed the funeral, obviously having another year in prison left to his sentence and all, and that she hadn’t been there, either.

But she had told Padmé goodbye through a ceremony of sorts with all the plants and flowers in her apartment, candles of varying heights and colors, an open window, and the Force, and had _felt_ something back through her connection to that precious fabric of the universe that made Rey know in her heart and soul that Padmé Amidala was at peace — because of anyone in the world, she knew she could tell Ben that.

She thought about writing a return address. Didn’t.

And then, her pen digging deep into the wood beneath the paper, she added in a heated scribble,

 _P.S. I don’t miss you at all, you big, stubborn,_ _infuriating_ _moof-milker._

Rey ripped the letter in pieces and threw it in the wastepaper bin on her way into the kitchen, BeeBee shooting straight upward out of sleep to bark excitedly and race after her at her heels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so very sorry for the immense delay on this chapter and am more grateful than I can say for your patience. I’ve been dealing with some rather severe health issues for the past month, and writing this seemed to trigger a lot of my triggers. That said, I poured my soul into all 40,000 words of Rey and Ben's seemingly month-long relationship packed into an hour, and truly hope you enjoyed it even though it was an emotional roller coaster! 
> 
> I would make me so happy to know what you thought of it, and if you caught Padme's rather blatant set-up efforts. :) Any ideas why Ben suddenly broke it off at the end?
> 
> Here is the outfit Padme gave Rey: http://coolspotters.com/characters/padme-amidala/and/clothing/senator-amidala-white-battle-costume#medium-1508303
> 
> I unfortunately need to take a little time away from this to study for the GMAT, but we’ll pick up again from Ben’s POV, and present day, next. These young fools in love still have some work to do.


	5. The Funeral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ben is again tied to a chair, hopefully for the last time, before circumstances take an unexpected turn.

______

**_Four days ago_ **

______

Outside the Theed Royal Palace, it seemed as though the entire population of Naboo -- and hundreds more from beyond the country’s borders -- had gathered for the chance to say farewell to their beloved Queen Emeritus, Senator and humanitarian, a woman of legend, love and, after a nearly twenty-year disappearance three decades earlier, much lore as well.

Throngs of curious young people who’d heard only stories of Padmé Naberrie Amidala at the height of her cultural influence through their parents and grandparents. Older men and women who’d passed a full lifetime alongside news of her power, altruism and mystery. They all crowded the streets as her funeral procession passed, en route to the vast chamber that constituted Royal Palace’s elliptical Great Hall.

The Hall was filled with chairs now, carefully arranged in ovoid rows around a raised central dais. Maroon and cream-colored silks and banners, the colors as Naboo’s Royal House, were draped across the platform, while black shrouds wrapped like Maypole ribbons down the lines of towering mahogany marble pillars that surrounded the immense atrium. A few attendants and dignitaries who’d elected to secure their seats rather than participate in the more public procession quietly milled about, awaiting the arrival of past and present Naboo royal families and the former queen.

And in a small, locked room tucked high in the clerestory, just beneath the Great Hall’s magnificent, crowning dome and the the light of morning streaming into the cavernous space from the circlet of ornate windows adorning it, Ben Amidala Solo waited.

Stuck in a kriffing, gods-damned chair. _Again._

This time, it was leather, like the straps wrapped around his wrists that held him there, and had been shoved up to a few vertical slits in the marble walls that allowed the room’s occupants to look out across the Hall below. Rather than a prison, the tiny chamber behind him looked like it typically served as some sort of record-keeping hub for Hall events or the Palace scribe; it was well-kept but musty, filled with lines of journals and expensive chairs around a work table outfitted with scrolls of rolled paper and pens.

Twenty minutes ago, Ben might have still been screaming from rage if he’d had a voice to begin with, but even that, too, had been snatched against his will.

His uncle’s parting words rang mockingly in his head while he’d stood at the door, wearing all black Nabooian mourning robes with a hooded cloak and in that moment looking more like one of the First Order’s many Dark Side Force-users had than Ben did:

 _“You know I don’t trust you. I didn’t think it was a good idea for you to be here to begin with. I won’t leave it to chance that you won’t jeopardize the next three hours for her or your mother or anyone else, so you will_ ** _stay_** _here and be silent about it until everything downstairs is good and finished._ ”

This he’d said just before he’d pinched Ben’s vocal chords with the Force — a vile trick that was new even to Ben, who’d been practically enslaved to a Force-wielding megalomaniac for years— and locked the door, probably barring it with the Force for good measure.

After Ben had gotten over five seconds of stunned stupor, which were five seconds more than his uncle deserved, he’d tried slamming the chair against the wall while he was still tied to it, kicking out its short wooden legs with a blinding fury, but that had only left him precariously balanced in a half-destroyed chair, the arm restraints either that strong or simply so Force-secured he’d never be able to free himself without the use of it.

It burned him to imagine Luke sharing this victory with his parents with a delighted chuckle — at how impotent their once-uncontrollable child was without access to that supernatural power that had both saved him and cursed him, at how easily he could be managed now if he ever stepped out of the line they dictated and wished for him to toe.

Was that why Luke was staying with his parents for the next month rather than returning to his precious Jedi Academy? he wondered with a sudden jolt of panic. To be his next jailer?

His rage and futile struggle eventually gave way to exhaustion and admitted defeat.

Sweat clinging to his brow, Ben let his head collapse tiredly to the side, gingerly pressing the more sensitive skin of his scarred temple against the cool stone of the marble wall directly beside him. He stared sightlessly down into the Great Hall — at small figures so far away their features were difficult to distinguish, who were greeting each other, bowing or hugging, crying and comforting.

Something wrenched in his chest.

All he’d wanted, when he’d agreed to the ridiculous constraints his mother had set around his attendance of the funeral, had been to come to his grandmother’s home city and grieve with everyone else who’d loved her, to have the chance to say goodbye to her one final time.

He _didn’t_ want to be down there, he told himself as he watched those distant figures, didn’t want to be anywhere near a mass of people who had only ever rejected and abhorred him. He half doubted, half shuddered at the idea of them trying to hug him. He’d mostly come to terms with the fact that any true chance at friendship or camaraderie had been lost when the truth emerged that the masked First Order terrorist of nightmares Kylo Ren and Darth Vader’s grandson Ben Organa Solo were one and the same, confirming most people’s suspicions about Ben Solo’s inbred evilness.

But even in his most forsaken imaginings, he’d never dreamed that he would spend the entirety of his grandmother’s funeral held hostage in an alcove directly adjacent the ceremony by his own kriffing _family_ , as silent and invisible as the ghost they all wished he was.

None of it, not a single bit, should have been surprising, especially after the bombshell discovery that Luke had been using the Force the entire time he’d been pretending to Ben that he wasn’t — that the only way for Ben to cope with his powers was to suppress them and never once speak of them, full stop.

Somehow, though, this latest betrayal still managed to catch him off guard.

It was his entirely his fault — for being so Force-damned _bereft_ of any hope, of any semblance of love at all that he’d been weak and foolish enough to accept that heavily conditioned white flag on the night of his grandmother’s death:

 

_It had taken a housekeeping bot’s disgruntled squeals to finally shift Ben from the emotionally exhausted ball in which he’d crumpled on the floor of his parents’ guest bedroom in the hours after his grandmother died._

_It could be midnight… five in the morning. He couldn’t tell. All he knew was that his well of seemingly inexhaustible tears had long dried, and Hosnia was still cloaked in the dotted, artificial lights of night. Save for the sliver of exterior lighting spilling in from the crisp white hallway beyond, the bedroom itself was swathed in shadows._

_Still, it was easy to see that it was completely wrecked._

_Ben stood numbly as the squat, round machine wove between his legs, chattering irritably while it sucked up broken glass and chipped wood. Limply, with deadened hands that felt like they belonged to someone else, he unbuttoned the navy suit jacket and removed it, shaking to the floor the small flakes of glass that clung to its arms before he lay it aside._

_Scattered around him were piles of papers and broken, empty drawers, a black dresser cracked and half-overturned directly beside him._

_All destruction, at his hand -- but now Ben could barely find the strength to lift the dresser away from the bed and sink mindlessly upon the hard mattress, his lungs, his throat, his swollen eyes and cheeks aching. After a day of complete upheaval, of incalculable confusion and fear and unspeakable grief, he found he lacked any remaining energy to so much as think a single thought at all._

_This --_ **_This,_ ** _at least, was familiar: Staring blankly at the wall in a small, dark, confined place._

_As the bot finished its floor maintenance and its low mechanical whir faded from the room, Ben sat alone in the darkness, weary to the bone -- to the soul, or the small pieces of one that he still had left._

_After another indefinite length of time, he looked down at his stiff, clenched right fist. The last human being who’d touched it had been his grandmother — he could still feel the memory of her lightly closing his fingers around the paper still inside, felt that if he could keep his hand shut long enough, he could hold forever that sensation of her loving hand on his._

_It was almost impossible to reconcile, how she had been alive not so very long ago… and now, she wasn’t. Now, she was just… gone._

_And everything felt empty._

_Ben’s hand trembled, the paper blurring before his vision. He briefly closed his eyes against a weak, renewed surge of emotion, swallowing back the grief that encircled his throat nearly as tightly as the Suppression collar still around it._

_Slowly, he opened his aching fingers._

_In the faint glow of the city lights beyond and all around, he could just make out that the folded slip of paper Padmé had given him was nearly crushed._

_He sucked in a soft, small breath for courage. Then, knowing he shouldn’t,_ **_knowing_ ** _he should crumple the paper back in his hand and never look at it again, he nudged it open with his thumb._

_Instantly recognizable block writing stared back at him._

_A phone number. And a message, clearly meant for his grandmother._

**_Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. There aren’t enough words in enough languages to express how grateful I am for the years I’ve had here with you. I’ll never forget our wonderful memories, or you._ **

**_Love, Rey_ **

_Ben stared down at her handwriting… at those small words of parting._

_Love, Rey._

_Reverently, he ran his thumb across her name, across the love she’d given, and remembered as if it were only a moment ago the feeling of her warmth and light, similarly running gently across the knuckles of his hand, his face, his heart itself._

_A new wave of grief and inexpressible longing ripped at his chest, though it was duller than he was used to, as if his drained emotions could only sustain so much more misery, now._

_His head bowed in a shuddering exhale, shoulders caving inward._

_Despite what he had promised his grandmother, Ben knew he could never dial that phone number._

_He had promised his grandmother a lot of things that night that he wasn’t sure he could ever do, for reasons within and outside of his control, and he abruptly hated himself even more than he already did for it._

_Though he still couldn’t understand why Rey had cared so much, not about him, he recognized that, somehow, their connection had become easy, and genuine, and knew enough from what he’d seen of her memories to understand that she’d been abandoned and betrayed over and over by those who had come into her life, just as Ben had been._

_And then he’d turned around and done the very same thing to her, in one of the worst possible ways._

_Maker, he’d felt her anguish as he’d severed whatever bond they’d had between them as clearly as he’d felt his own -- anguish and bewilderment and also fury. He was certain she’d never forgive him, even if it had been entirely for her sake and not at all for his that he’d done it._

_Why should she?_

_It was — It was for the best, he told himself, as much as imagining her sharing that same light and strength as softly and fiercely with anyone else wrenched so painfully at his chest that he could barely breathe._

_Surely she couldn’t think of him that way, and beyond his undying loyalty — she had it, already— what could Ben ever hope to give Rey that she couldn’t get easily from someone else? Someone who wasn’t beyond damaged goods, who wasn’t a walking liability with a sign that said ‘Loathe Me; Destroy Me’ plastered directly on his forehead, who was as handsome and well-liked as she was beautiful and kind and who didn’t look and feel like a monster. Someone who didn’t hurt her simply by existing._

_He’d_ **_hurt_ ** _her without even touching her, without intending to, without even trying._

 _Surely…_ **_surely_ ** _Grandmother would understand he was keeping her away out of—_

_“Ben.”_

_Ben’s heart caught in his throat, back instantly stiffening._

_His head wrenched upward._

_Leia’s petite form stood at the doorway, voice tired. In the shadows, Ben could just make out the new lines along her aged face; it looked as puffy and drained as his must have earlier, probably still was even now._

_Swiftly, he folded his hand back over that small, precious slip of paper and braced himself for whatever was to come as the eyes of the woman who had once been his mother took in the still-wrecked room._

_“Here to throw me out before I can ruin anything else of yours?” he asked dully, his voice a hoarse croak._

_To his surprise, she only looked at him. Then she took a step into the room, rolling her fingers over the control panel beside the door; as they had in Padmé’s room, low lights around the floor’s edge suddenly illuminated the bedroom’s shadows in a dim glow._

_Ben had forgotten how small she was, or perhaps how much he’d grown since he’d spent much time with her that didn’t consist of him being chained to a chair in an interrogation room. Standing, her eyes were nearly equally matched to his, sitting._

_After several seconds in which neither of them moved or, possibly, breathed, she said quietly, “It’s been so long since we’ve talked. Just you and me.”_

_Her voice was as careful and even as it was whenever she’d tried to breach a topic with him when he was younger that she thought would set off his… sensitivities._

_She wasn’t wrong to be concerned: It was as infuriating to Ben now as it had been then._

_Like a bandaid accidentally ripping off an only recently-formed scab, the anguish of a never-ending life of loneliness and abandonment blazed through him._

_“Whose fault is that? You disowned_ **_me!”_ ** _he lashed out, every cell inside him burning from the torment of his birth mother’s continued rejection of him on the heels of the loss of the only mother figure he’d ever truly known. “I waited nine years; you_ **_never_ ** _came. If I’ve mattered so little to you all this time, then I have nothing to say to you now. Mother.” This he twisted like a curse._

_Briefly, Leia lifted a hand to her forehead, shaking her head with a pained expression, which was the most emotion she’d ever shown around him since she’d left him at that ill-fated final academy fifteen years ago. “Ben, I’m the Director of Alliance Special Intelligence. You couldn’t have possibly expected me to show any overt favoritism—”_

_Ben scoffed. “Oh, yes, how foolish of me to expect my mother to choose her own son over her work for once in her life!”_

_She charged another several steps into the room. “Don’t you dare use that tone with me, young man!” she hissed, shoving a pointed finger at him. “Any visits with you, any undocumented conversations or requests for special treatment, would have hindered my credibility to advocate on your behalf should the need have arisen for an early release,_ **_which it did,_ ** _and which I have since done. Instead of laying into me like the nerfherding savage I know I didn’t raise, you might want to thank me for securing your presence for the passing tonight of the only person in this family you’ve ever really cared about!”_

 _Ben leapt to his feet, hands clenched in fists; he almost regretted it when his body’s instinctive response was to cringe in anticipation of an electric shock from a Z6 for such a transgression. “That’s absolute bantha shit! I stopped expecting anything from all of you after_ **_you_ ** _stopped caring at all about me!” And then, because he wanted her to hurt as much as he had, snarled, “It isn’t my fault that happened almost as soon as I was born.”_

_Leia’s hand flashed out, connecting vehemently with his face with a hard slap. The sound echoed around the room, the lingering pain sharp on his cheek._

_Ben was too stunned to recoil._

_His mother, for her part, looked surprised, too._

_She’d never struck him before. Had she slapped his father, in one of his parents’ many heated arguments that had rocked his childhood? Certainly. But in all these years of accidents and destruction and angrily flung words of hurt and abandonment, she’d never struck Ben._

_It shattered something he didn’t know was still held together in some small, cobwebbed corner of his mind— a powerfully repressed, fervid hope that he might one day still be welcomed by those hands, held by those arms, a child who could still be loved by his mother._

_It was a fool’s hope, he knew now._

_With his grandmother gone, if his own_ **_mother_ ** _couldn’t even…_

_He couldn't bear to complete the thought._

_Slowly, Ben sat back down rigidly on the bed, the rest of his muscles still frozen. He stared lifelessly at the floor._

_He was alone._

_He completely, utterly alone._

_A shock of emptiness replaced the terror he’d felt earlier at the same revelation._

_Leia took a weary step backward, too. “That was a mistake,” she muttered quietly, sounding as though she was speaking more to herself than to him. She looked at him, her brown eyes hard and grieving all at once. “But you shouldn’t have said that, either.”_

_In a rush, fury burned through the desolate, hollow spaces that had opened inside him. “Why not? You never wanted me around,” he snarled, primal wounds that had waited decades to fling themselves at their inflictor. “You sent me from school to school no matter how badly it went at each of them so you didn’t have to deal with me at home! Even_ **_you_ ** _thought I was like Vader, just like everyone else!”_

 _At her sudden, stricken expression, Ben scoffed, “Please, do you really think I didn’t hear you and father and Uncle Luke talking about me? None of you are exactly_ **_quiet_ ** _when you’re going off on something.”_

 _Leia recovered quickly. “You’re acting awfully high and mighty for someone who used Darth Vader’s own gods-damned lightsaber to terrorize the entire continent for four years as a High Inquisitor of the Supreme Leader of the First Order himself,” she retorted; he could hear the anger in her voice now, and at least it was more familiar than pseudo regret. “_ ** _Gods,_ ** _Ben, of anyone on the planet, your own mother was in the perfect position to help you get the hell out of there, but did you ever once ask me?”_

 _“Help me? You_ **_left_ ** _me with them!” The pain of her ultimate betrayal of him half a lifetime ago ripped from his lips before he could stop it. “I begged you to let me finish secondary school at home, but instead you dumped me at the First Order’s kriffing training academy!”_

 _Leia raked a hand down her face and briefly closed her eyes. “Do you really believe I’d have done that if I’d known Eclipse was a feeder school for the world’s most sophisticated illegal arms network? There’s never a day that passes that I don’t regret I suspected nothing when they were the only academy in the Alliance that agreed to take you, you_ _have_ _to believe that.”_

_Oh, of course Ben believed it — it would have spared her a world of trouble and scandal and public shame if her only son hadn’t become one of the Alliance’s most wanted criminals in the span of a single year._

_As if she was reading his mind — and maybe she was; after all, if Luke was a skilled Force-user now, perhaps his mother was, too — Leia met his accusing gaze and said evenly, “But it doesn’t erase the fact that you chose to stay with them and say nothing when your life and my mother’s life were at stake.”_

_Ben’s lips parted in disbelief. “Did you learn nothing from my trial? From your_ **_interrogations_ ** _of me? There was no choice with him— there was never a choice!”_

_She crossed her arms, shaking her head. “I didn’t take my son for an idiot. In my lifetime, I’ve learned there’s always a way out.”_

_That stung almost as much as her slap. “You’re as insane as Snoke was if you think I would have come to you for help,” he bit out; as the conversation disintegrated as it always did into insults and angry words, he suddenly wanted nothing more than to flee the room, flee this entire kriffing penthouse, and never come back. “I don’t think I encountered anyone else as eager to shoot Suppression darts at my chest as you were when you saw who Kylo Ren really was.”_

_For a moment, Leia looked like she was ready to slap him again. “That was almost four_ **_years_ ** _after—“_

_Abruptly, she cut herself off, pressing her hand to her mouth. “No. I’m not fighting with you anymore. Not… not tonight.” She suddenly looked at least a decade older than her age, and when she trailed off, she sounded as tired as Ben felt._

_He rigidly turned away from her and toward the window, his hands clenched so tightly he could feel his nails drawing blood from his palms. He stared out at the lights of the city, praying she’d leave without another word, praying she wouldn’t throw him out, that he wouldn’t have to find an alley to sleep in, water to drink. On another day, in other place, he would have embraced the anger of that bitter parting, but now, he didn’t think he could bear it._

_Not tonight._

_He held his breath, and prayed for even this small mercy to a Maker that had long forgotten him._

_His shoulders stiffened and then slumped incrementally when Leia spoke again… but not to order him to leave._

_“Your grandmother will be laid to rest in Theed in three days’ time.” Her tone had transitioned into full diplomat, as Ben had once thought of his mother’s professional persona as a child. “A state funeral in the Royal Palace. She won’t be cremated in the Funeral Temple.”_

_That a former Queen would choose to forgo the final step of ascending into the afterlife through the soul’s release upon a lighted pyre in the sacred Funeral Temple high above the city, surrounded only by a small group of family and friends, was an immense break in Naboo tradition. For a moment, the shock of that broke though Ben’s defensive walls so much that he turned to look back at his mother._

_“What? Why?”_

_Leia’s gaze shifted briefly to the right side of his face, to the obvious scars from retribution and falling, burning metal and mushrooming clouds of flame. “Because she believed that image might affect you.”_

_The air rushed from his lungs. A memory of the pungent smell of smoke and ash that burned with every breath he took momentarily replaced the bedroom’s chill._

_His stomach abruptly turned as he imagined it now — something that didn’t require much effort, as Padmé had nearly been caught in the Supremacy Tower explosion herself, and Ben had singularly fought his way past a legion of Snoke’s personal guard and two Knights of Ren to help her evacuate through the emergency shaft in the chaos of the imploding building before the entire thing had collapsed._

_Padmé had made it out, then. Ben hadn’t, and he himself hadn’t been the only person he’d seen burned alive._

_He hadn’t thought that far ahead, what watching that Nabooian funeral rite might do to him._

_It was clear his grandmother had._

_“She would want you to be there, and I expect you’ll want that, too,” Leia continued, either not noticing or not heeding how he’d become statue-still. “However, we believe it would be best if you watched the ceremony from a separate space, out of sight of the general public. Participating in the funeral procession is out of the question.”_

_Ben’s heart abruptly thudded hard in his chest. His gaze again jerked to his mother’s, mouth agape. Like the funeral rites, he hadn’t had the chance to think ahead to consider what attending Padmé’s funeral with his estranged family would be like, but if he had, he would have probably guessed he’d be shoved into another suit like this one and made to bear them all silently, which he would have, for his grandmother’s sake._

_He would have never dreamed they would choose not to bear_ **_him._ **

_“ ‘We’ believe it best? We who? You, Luke, or everyone else hovering around her room who had no right to be there during one of the most private moments our family will ever experience?”_ _he demanded, trying to sound as though yet another fragile piece of his soul wasn’t breaking apart._

 _Leia held his wild-eyed stare evenly. “As it is and always has been for those born of royalty, our family does not hold sole claim over Padmé Amidala. Your grandmother dedicated her heart, her privacy and her entire life to public service, and she was one of the greatest women Naboo has ever known. She deserves to have her sendoff be entirely about her, and you know that if you’re seen, they will make it all about_ **_you.”_ ** __

_He flinched imperceptibly at the sudden, sharp inflection to her voice._

_“You know it’s true, Ben,” she said more gently, as if she was actually concerned about how this was affecting him; a bold-faced lie. “The media, the politicians, the general public… they haven’t changed their ways since you were arrested. As technology’s improved, they’ve only gotten worse. She doesn’t deserve that, and neither do you.”_

_Feeling faint, Ben grasped the mattress with white knuckles, breathing hard. If the reactions he’d received tonight from the flight staff and his grandmother’s entourage were any indication, he knew what Leia said was probably true. Not all of Snoke’s missions were behind closed doors; a number of the High Inquisitorial Knights of Ren’s brutal exploits were captured on camera, surveillance or otherwise, and shared widely by the media; since Ben was the only surviving Knight and had gone on very public trial, the worst crimes of all of them were commonly attributed to him alone._

_It didn’t make this hurt any less, make him think that maybe it_ **_would_ ** _be best if he crawled into an alley somewhere and planned to never come out of it again._

_Leia’s own expression could have almost been described as regretful were it not for the fact that this entire ostracization screamed Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker from top to bottom. At one time, Ben would have been able to easily sense through the Force if her regret was anywhere near genuine, but now he could rely only on sensory cues that he still wasn’t entirely literate at reading._

_“Think about it, and let me know if you’d still like to come,” she said. “You can stay here as long as you need, provided you clean up… whatever happened here. Perhaps… Perhaps tomorrow…”_

_But Ben turned away from her again, what he once had called his Force energy aching as badly as his body would after the worst punishments from Snoke and the prison guards that he’d ever received._

_She shut the door behind him without finishing the thought._

 

And Ben had been right, in that moment — he knew that more clearly than ever now, perched high in that cloistered room above the Theed Palace’s Great Hall without a single way out.

He shouldn’t have come.

But he had steeled himself to watch the funeral somewhere separate and alone, over the course of those two days previous of being as silently helpful around the funeral preparations as he could be while doing his gods-damned best to remain out of sight and out of conversation with his family, of enduring the first of what he was certain would be many abusive check-ins with his parole officer that made him only more confident the Alliance was circling a noose around his neck, of sitting in on the reading of Padmé’s will and learning that in addition to Varykino, his grandmother had left him more money than the Maker to support his running of it, and himself. While not even that could buy him his freedom, it was enough that Ben could at least find a few more items of clothing that actually fit him and immediately move into a separate hotel room rather than endure the tense awkwardness — and, in Uncle Luke’s case, open hostility — of being in his family’s penthouse one more day.

He just hadn’t prepared to be Force-bound and gagged by his own gods-damned uncle when the day of the funeral came.

Because of course, why shouldn’t he have considered that possibility?

Not for the first time, Ben longed for the experience of a single day being a normal person with a normal family, whatever that looked liked. It certainly wouldn’t be anything like this.

Below, the Great Hall’s hushed volume had begun to raise as the funeral procession through Theed’s streets approached. Crowds of mourners dressed in dark colors poured inside, streaming through the columns to line the main aisle that led to the dais or find an available chair that hadn’t already been cordoned off for processing dignitaries. While many were silent, some where already openly weeping.

Feeling like some sort of bell-tower phantom from childhood tales, Ben watched the increased activity with detached melancholy. It was almost fitting, he thought, that he should observe this ceremony as he had almost all others in his life: as an outside interloper, whether as a painfully shy, sensitive child or as one of the First Order’s High Inquisition knights, waiting in the shadows to strike at Snoke’s next targets.

He managed to remain impassive until the immense hall was packed to nearly full capacity, and a sweet yet haunting Nabooian melody began to play, one that reminded him instantly of the lullabies Padmé had always sang him to soothe him and lull him to sleep.

Immediately, a burst of emotion swelled within him, and his eyes began to prick and burn with an indescribable grief he thought he’d cried out of himself three days ago.

And he was _trapped_ here, just as he’d been at the Central Detention Center, just as he’d been at the First Order — to endure every wracking agony that was to come without respite, completely alone.

Desperately, Ben wrenched again at his bindings. When they held fast, his heartbeat increased rapidly, and at the same circumstances that always without fail triggered outbursts of the Force even though his was suppressed right now, he fought to breathe. Oh Maker, he didn’t want to be by himself for this, he didn’t want to be anywhere _near_ here if he was going to be by himself for this—

At that moment, far below, his grandmother’s casket entered the far end of the Hall, looking from this angle as if it were floating.

For a minute, everything in the cavernous room — and his mind — stilled.

Even from this distance, he could see that she was in a dress of dark blue silk the same color as his navy suit, which he’d elected to wear over black for the sole reason that anything even remotely resembling Kylo Ren had no place around his grandmother. She was laying on a bed of flowers, her curled white hair spread around her head like a halo, and almost appeared to be only sleeping — sleeping, in a room jammed full with crying people.

And it never failed that just when Ben thought he couldn’t possibly feel more alone than he already did, circumstances always found a way of surprising him.

Directly behind the casket walked his family: Leia, wearing a traditional Nabooian mourning veil and dress, was wedged firmly between his uncle and his father, and was clutching the arms of both men. Ben’s shaggy, tanned-skinned godfather was following just behind Han, wearing a black suit that must have been custom made to fit his incredible height. The Wookiee’s mane of dark hair was held back in a low ponytail, his beard long but neat, and it was the first time Ben had seen it look halfway tamed.

For a split second, Luke’s head turned upward.

Ben stiffened immediately, sitting up straight.

It was clear without a doubt the despicable old man was looking straight at him, no doubt threateningly, before he faced forward again without another glance in the clerestory's direction.

The sight of the four of them together, practically holding each other up as they always had since Ben was a child while he’d again been abandoned and condemned to this forgotten room, farther from his grandmother than even the strangers on the street who’d been allowed inside the Hall, did something as damaging and ugly to his insides as an explosive’s shrapnel did while tearing through skin and bone.

He shuddered as several tears tore themselves free of his stinging eyes. A soundless moan ripped from the blackest of pained depths inside him; he could feel the hot liquid trailing down his cheeks with agonizing slowness, and he couldn’t wipe it away.

Coming here had been a mistake, it had been such a mistake…

Desperate to block his view of scenes that would surely only cause him more pain, if not rip apart completely the delicate, numb stability he’d clung to these past four days, Ben squeezed his eyes tightly shut—

And there, in the darkness of his own sightless vision, was his grandmother, clad in that same dress of blue. Here, though, her long hair was as chestnut brown as it had been when Ben was a small child, her skin unlined.

She gazed at him softly, white flowers adorning her curls like stars.

He sucked in a quiet intake of disbelieving breath.

As if in response to his surprise, her lyrical voice spoke over the noise of the Nabooian hymn — silently, as if she was only in his head. _‘Ben. My sweet lamb.’_ The sound of her was unchanged, her expression filled with loving kindness he’d never known from almost anyone else. ‘ _You are never as alone as you believe yourself to be.’_

Tears flooded Ben’s eyes behind the closed lids, but his image of his grandmother didn’t waver. Perhaps he was losing his mind, perhaps this was the work of some small part of him talking to himself that knew Padmé well enough to guess what she would say, but in that moment, he didn’t care.

For a single second, he wasn’t as alone as he had believed he was.

 _‘But I— I am,’_ he thought faintly, choking in a small, trembling breath. _‘No one here — no one else wants me. I have nothing left now that you’re… you’re gone.’_

 _Why did you have to leave so soon,_ ** _why?_** the child inside him pleaded plaintively.

With a small, compassionate smile, Padmé gently reached forward to wipe his tears away — a whisper of a breeze that couldn’t possibly be real. _‘All things fall away in time, darling boy. Even the Livet Tower’s Eternal Flame will one day fade back into the Force that binds us all,’_ she said, and Ben clung to her motions with his eyes as if this was the last time on earth he would ever see or hear her again. ‘ _But it isn’t true that you have nothing left now. You have yourself. You have my spirit, which lives on in your heart. And you have Varykino, and the funds to run it — the freedom to create your own future for the first time in your life. That’s quite a lot to begin with, isn’t it?’_

Somehow, it was far easier being honest with her when Ben knew she wasn’t really there.

 _‘I don’t know for how long,’_ he thought brokenly, tears bubbling readily from his eyes. _‘They won’t let me keep it unless someone hires me knowing everything that I’ve done, and I... no one'll ever...'_ He pressed wavering lips together; what professional skills did he have anyway, beyond lurking in shadows, frightening and torturing and killing people?

Swallowing thickly, he shook his head. _‘I… I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Grandmother. I’m making this all about me, and today is about you.’_

His grandmother’s smile twisted sadly. _‘Oh my dear, I’ve had my days. What matters to me now is knowing that you also will have yours, and that you will know even more joy and love than I did in mine.’_

Even in four days, Ben had forgotten what it was like — such kindness. He sucked in a soft, gasping breath, fighting back tears.

Her eyes sad but bright, Padmé murmured, ‘ _And you will, Ben. Because you know what it is to love so deeply and fully that it can remake your heart even more than it can break it. And there are still people in this world who can love you back just as fully.’_

Ben didn’t believe that for a moment. He shook his head again, this time despairingly. _‘There aren’t, and — and even if there somehow were, it couldn’t be… her. It’s not… safe for her. Around me.’_ He could barely get a coherent thought out without desperately holding back another wave of emotion. _‘She — She_ ** _hurt_** _when I did, and I— I hurt_ ** _all the time.’_**

His grandmother seemed to know who he meant without a single name shared _. ‘But you don’t have to hurt anymore, sweet one. You aren’t a prisoner. You’re no longer trapped without agency like the child you were. With the money I left you, you have the freedom to remove yourself from almost any uncomfortable situation. The only one hurting you right now, my love, is_ ** _yourself._** _Every time you hate who you are and doubt yourself, every time you hate someone else and hold a grievance against them, you’re only harming yourself.’_

He pressed trembling lips together tightly. _‘But it isn’t just me, Grandmother. My own family, your **son** , locked me in this room like I’m nothing! My mother can’t even bear to touch me or speak to me like you do, like I’m not even her son!’ _

Padmé briefly frowned downward, as if she was looking through the void at wherever Luke and Leia now stood.

 _‘Pushing them away like they have me— it’s made it hurt_ ** _less,’_** Ben explained. The best guard dogs always bit first, barked last, and never wagged their tails, Snoke had told him during his first few weeks of personalized mentoring at Eclipse Academy — when he hadn’t the slightest idea of what he was getting into — and the brutally bullied fifteen-year-old he’d been then had studiously applied that principle in the guarding of himself, too.

 _‘Has it? It seems to me as though it’s only brought you more misery.’_ His grandmother's frown hadn’t faded, though it was now set on him, but her eyes were kind. _‘My darling, what have I always told you? The world will always try to impress upon you its own drama, its own pain. But if you can love yourself, if you can be satisfied with_ ** _yourself,_** _then nothing outside of you can ever destroy you or hurt you in a way that truly matters.’_

Ben’s lips parted.

His turmoil of aching emotions, his very breath went completely still.

He’d never quite understood this when his grandmother had said it to him as a teenager. It was a very different message than that of his parents or Uncle Luke, who told him to lock away and fear the power inside him, fear _himself_ , or Snoke, who told him the world was hellbent on destroying him like it was every Force-sensitive, and to unleash that power against it and wield it alongside his anger and hatred like conjoined weapons, or the Alliance officials, who told him he was no one - nothing but legitimately Sith-spawned filth.

He still didn’t entirely grasp how Padmé's advice could work -- how to even begin to get himself to a place in his mind where he didn't fractionally hate who he was, what he'd become. But even so, in that moment, as if from a faded memory or a deep conviction that wasn’t his but still nonetheless lay dormant in his mind, he instantly knew without any shadow of a doubt that what she said was _true._

Another gentle breeze as Padmé tenderly smoothed back his hair as she would when he was a boy. _‘It breaks my heart that you’ve been driven to do this to yourself, Ben. But it is something that is in your power to_ ** _change.’_**

Something small but fundamental shifted in his mind.

 _‘How do I do it?’_ he managed faintly. _‘How?’_

Padmé smiled again, wider now, as if she’d simply been waiting for him to ask. _‘Here’s the truth, lamb: Those who love us, those who hate us— the first may stay, and we’re lucky if they do, but the latter will always go their own way eventually. So be assured that the people who dislike you will not be there forever, and in the meantime, take the love you once gave me — take the love I will send you always — and give it to_ ** _yourself._** _Be_ _that one person who stands by your side for yourself.’_ Her gaze softened with compassion, and understanding. _’Then, it’ll get easier for you to allow others to love you, too.’_

Ben inhaled a shaky breath, trying not to think about the fact that he was holding an earnest conversation with someone whose funeral was unfolding outside the windows beside him at this very moment — and that everything she was saying felt simultaneously terrifying and earth-shattering, but also as if some long-buried part of himself had always _known_.

 _‘Even… Even if I learned not to hate myself,’_ he eventually pieced together hesitantly, _‘she’d never want— it. Returning to Varykino.’_ He stopped himself short of even daring to think ‘me.’ ‘ _Not if I was there.'_

Padmé drew closer, settling alongside him. Her eyes, as richly brown as his mother’s and his, were pained. Rather than respond to that, she surprised him by saying, _‘Ben, I have something I need to say to you that I never had the chance to, and it’s important you hear me.’_

He stilled, then nodded nervously, the single flicker of his response faint. _‘What?’_

His grandmother took his hand in hers — nothing more than the brush of a cool draft from an open door or window against his skin. _‘I will always be humbled and grateful that you loved me so much, you gave up four years of your life to protect me without a single word to any of us. But… why do you think I attended the gala at the Supremacy Building that night, once I had some idea of what was happening to you?’_

Ben shook his head, indicating his uncertainty. It was true: in the chaos that had led up to and followed Snoke’s order for her death and Ben’s immediate move to halt it, they’d never had a chance to speak about this, and Padmé had never brought it up with him in their closely observed visits and correspondence afterward, either.

 _‘I came,’_ she said, _‘because I wanted to free you from whatever it was that was holding you there and give you a chance to save yourself.’_

At his sharp, surprised intake of breath, she continued, _‘As you didn’t wish to see me suffer, I loved you so much that I couldn’t bear to know you were suffering, either. Not needlessly. I came to help you, Ben. I would have_ ** _gladly_** _given my life in exchange for yours.’_

Tears spilled down his cheeks. _‘But — But I—‘_ His whispered response sounded so much like the uncertain, unconfident child he once had been, and in many ways, still was. _‘You made such a difference, to so many people, and I— I only hurt people; I didn’t matter like you did—‘_

 _‘But you do matter, darling. Immensely. To me. And my point is that if you had told me what you were doing sooner, you may have received a very different response than what you believed to be true. Do you see? You think you know Rey’s mind and that what you’re doing is best for her, but have you asked_ **_her?”_ **

The piercing echo of Rey’s parting shriek of anger reverberated in his head as it had so many times since that wonderful, terrible afternoon: _Maybe some of them_ ** _can,_** _you stupid, stubborn moonbrain!_

The ghost of his grandmother’s presence lightly squeezed his hand. _‘Open your eyes, my darling boy,’_ she repeated, her smile knowing. _‘You are never as alone as you believe you are.’_

At that moment, the harsh sound of jiggling door handle somewhere close by jolted Ben back to the small room imprisoning him.

He blinked in surprise, nearly blinded by the light of the single window illuminating the chamber from behind, and quickly twisted his head to stare at the locked door leading to the narrowed, spiral staircase down to the hall’s triforium.

Over the strains of a full orchestra and another Nabooian hymn, the handle appeared completely still.

Heart flooding with disappointment, Ben swiftly squeezed his eyes shut again, but his grandmother was gone.

He released a long, heavy breath and again let his forehead fall forward with a tired _bang_ against the stone wall alongside the slit out into the Palace’s Great Hall. Though his cheeks were damp with emotion, it had calmed him, and righted him, as his grandmother’s presence always did, real or imagined. For that, he was inexpressibly grateful.

Below, the hundreds of people that filled the atrium had begun singing a Nabooian mourning song, one that Ben knew from attending enough funerals with his family as a child was traditionally placed about a quarter of the way through a funeral ceremony. Padmé’s casket was already on the dais, and two high priestesses of the moon goddess Shiraya rotated around it with incense, officiating the rites of passing.

 _Thank you for helping me,_ he thought down at her silently, sending her still, tiny form all the love he possessed. _Thank you for never leaving me when everyone else—_

Unexpectedly, the door handle abruptly rattled again, this time louder and more violently.

Ben jerked upward to stare at it, uncertain if he should start dreading or relishing the blowout that was surely to come.  


No, not relishing, he revised quickly— Ben had never wanted to cause a commotion at his grandmother’s funeral, if only his uncle had actually _trusted_ him enough to believe that. So much for the old man’s dastardly plan; how would a member of the Palace staff react to finding the supposedly incarcerated nightmare of a grandson of the deceased Queen of Naboo here like this, and unable to say a word to explain his presence?

Outside the door, there was a small _thud_ and a muffled curse—

 _And then the entire thing broke inward,_ the lock ripping straight out of the marble wall.

If Ben had been told to bet on who would burst into the room, he would have lost every single credit he’d been given.

With the forward momentum of a charging train, his godfather nearly collided with a low-hanging mosaic lamp above the room’s work table, growling in Shyriiwook as he snatched the antique between his hands to keep it from crashing to the floor.

Behind him, his father glanced briefly at the broken door before waving a hand at it, dressed in the same brown suit Ben couldn’t remember him ever _not_ wearing to any sort of formal affair. “Tell them we’ll pay for that,” he commented distractedly.

Han looked around the room. When his gaze landed on Ben, red-eyed, tearful and tied to a chair, he swore again. _“Chewie…”_ he growled.

Ben wasn’t sure whether to be humiliated, angry or grateful as the Kashyyk Wookiee stared down as him, looking as taken aback as his father appeared. Age had touched him too, and this close, Ben could see that his mass of hair was streaked with grey. Then, in two steps, the powerfully-built man, large even compared to _Ben,_ crossed the room and ripped the leather binds from around his arms with two mighty tugs.

He couldn’t get out of the chair fast enough; leaping to his feet, he took a stumbling step backward and almost immediately collided with the far wall. Aside from assiduously avoiding his father, Ben hadn’t spoken more than two words to him since they’d nearly collided outside his grandmother’s room three days ago, and his godfather had arrived to the funeral separately. Why had they come here? What did they want from him?

“Skywalker twins. How can I love them and want to kill them at the same time?” his father growled, looking disgusted. “Luke’s been paranoid after that last Jedi Academy incident, but this is over the top even for him. When I heard—”

His father trailed off as Ben flung him a malicious expression of absolute vitriol. _Luke_ had been paranoid? What did they think that ‘incident’ had done to _Ben?_

“For the record,” Han said slowly, waving his finger in a small circle to indicate their surroundings, “I was against this.”

Ben scoffed, wrapping his arms defensively across his chest and bowing his head away from both men. Supposedly his father had been against sending him away to private academies, too, if his word before their argument at the Central Detention Center nine years ago had turned explosive was anything to go by. So much for advocating for his son; look how well that had turned out for Ben.

A small furrow appeared between Han’s brows. He frowned, looking both wary and concerned. “What’s the matter with you?” he demanded, gruff bluntness unchanged by the years. “I’d’ve thought you’d be shouting at me like your mother by now.”

Ben glared at him — but of _course_ , he didn’t have a clue the full extent of what Luke had done to him — before shoving his finger down at the solemnity of the ceremony unfolding below and then gesturing vehemently at his Force Suppression collar and angrily clasping his hand around his throat.

Somehow, his father understood the mishmash of disjointed motions enough to grimace. “Remind me to punch Luke later,” he muttered.

Ben almost rolled his eyes — as if his father would follow through on that threat with his beloved brother-in-law. Just as quickly, he recoiled swiftly as the older man took another step toward him, the same regretful gleam in his eyes that his mother had worn three nights ago. He still didn’t trust it — trusted them as little as they apparently trusted him — and desperately scrabbled for the cold, impassive mask of Kylo Ren, but found the old facade was slippery in his grasp.

Han stopped approaching him. Sighed. “Look, kid… I’m not here to give you anymore grief,” he said, running a hand through his silver hair, then looked uncertain of what to do with it before awkwardly shoving it in his coat pocket. “Chewie and me — we’re here to sit with you ’til this whole thing’s over.”

Ben’s mouth dropped open.

In Shyriiwook, Chewie voiced his assent, already dragging over two additional chairs from the table up to the slits in the wall.

Helplessly, Ben looked between them, unable to fully comprehend this turn of events.

His father’s lip curled aggravatedly as he rearranged one of the chairs. “Funerals are messy, grating things — people you’ve never met before crying all over you, talking to you like you’re their best friend even though it’s been thirty years since you last sneezed at them. Speeches, and flowers, and — Ugh. Hate them, myself.” He met Ben’s wide-eyed stare, his own eyes blazing with a focused intensity he’d rarely ever shown Ben as a boy. “I’ll be damned if my son gets to sneak his way out of this one without me with him.”

Any lingering rancor and suspicion died in Ben’s throat.

He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as both Han and Chewie settled into the seats he hadn’t partially destroyed, their combined bulk filling at least a third of the space in the small room.

True to form, his godfather reached into his suit pocket, pulled out a slender silver flask, and took a sizable swig. As soon as he noticed, his father glared over at his best friend.

“Hey, I was wondering what happened to that,” he said irritably, plucking it from Chewie’s hands and mirroring the gulp with an even longer one of his own. After a second, he glanced up to Ben with an almost hesitant expression. “You want some, kid? This stuff tends to make days like this go down… smoother, if you know what I mean.”

Ben was still so stunned that it took him a couple seconds more to shake himself enough from his stupor and respond with a weak shake of his head. Snoke had expressly forbid the consumption of alcohol among his Knights, the CDC had obviously been no different, and, given his still-fragile mental state, Ben felt it decidedly unwise he begin now.

It didn’t mean he wasn’t grateful the offer had been extended to him.

Briefly, Han tipped the flask toward him in a wobbling salute. “Suit yourself.”

As the shock slowly wore off the seeming impossibility that two members of his family had cared enough about him to not only come _looking_ for him but to stay with him even now, whatever their reasons for doing it, Ben found himself gradually uncurling from the defensive rigidness his muscles had automatically locked into, though the pain of a childhood of separation still hadn’t quite faded.

To a reserved, socially awkward five-year-old boy who’d been allowed to attend a few of his father’s races, see one of Chewie’s test runs, he and Han had seemed like gods, these two suave, confident men who interacted so easily with admirers and had driven cars on pro racing circuits and test tracks seemingly faster than the speed of light. But Han had traveled the world so frequently, away on racing or sponsorship gigs or ‘breaks’ from his relationship with Leia, that Ben had rarely seen him otherwise, and Chewie had always gone wherever his father did. Those long separations had only grown longer still the more difficulty Ben had experienced managing his burgeoning Force powers.

Ben had hidden how much his father’s repeated rejections of him had stung behind a wall of detachment and defensiveness. But now, looking at him as an adult himself — at his father’s sudden, unexpected awkwardness that felt very familiar to Ben — he wondered how much of Han’s seemingly constant string of distractions had simply been genuine cluelessness with what to do with a young boy who was dissimilar from him in so many ways.

While that didn’t fully excuse the distance he’d elected to keep from Ben when Ben had _needed_ his family around him, they’d…

They’d broken down a kriffing _door_ for him.

In the Royal Palace of Theed, of all places.

In all the years Ben had been locked away at schools and padded rooms, his father had never done anything like that.

The ceremony was halfway through by the time Ben felt steady enough to move. Tentatively, he drew up alongside the two older men, eschewing the hated leather chair in favor of leaning against the marble wall beside the vertical openings so he could still see out them if he tilted his head.

As he settled there, Han absently gave the side of his leg a brief, gentle pat.

Ben stiffened.

Mid-gesture, his father’s hand also froze, as if he suddenly realized what he was doing, before he slowly pulled his arm back to his side.

Even still, at the unexpected and — and not unwelcome solidarity, emotion burned at Ben’s eyes and quivered at his chin that had nothing to do with the funeral rites taking place far below.

As it turned out, his grandmother was, yet again, entirely correct.

He… He really wasn’t as alone as he had believed himself to be.

Through a blur of grateful tears, Ben peered downward from where he stood, observing the central dais. Together, the High Priestesses had began recounting Padmé’s immense legacy with the passion and skill of two master orators so flawlessly in sync with the other that one could finish the thoughts of the other without losing beat or momentum. It was moving, and powerful, and seemed an almost superhuman feat.

For a moment, he wondered if they too were secretly Force-sensitive — bound to each other’s minds as he had briefly been Rey.

Rey.

The kindest, most powerful and magnificent woman who was not his grandmother that Ben had ever had the honor of knowing, if only for a single hour -- so much so that she'd left him repeatedly struck dumb in awe of her, even in that short time. He’d been such an idiot throughout most of their lone encounter otherwise, such an ass and a gods-damned idiot.

But for a brief moment, there near the end, it’d almost seemed as though she… _liked_ him, cared about him. Or... at least didn't seem to mind his presence. Somehow.

Ben didn't dare, couldn't imagine she would have ever thought of him as anything beyond that, even though he...

 _Maker_ , he wasn't sure a single day had passed since that encounter that he hadn't thought of her, even if only for a passing moment.

Just for now, he allowed himself to remember the warm, comforting press of Rey's Force energy around his hand as the High Priestesses weaved their verbal memorial together like a dance.

She would have liked this, he thought, the beauty and life these Priestesses brought to a place otherwise filled with the dark shadows of mourning—

And abruptly jolted so violently that Han shot him a slanted, worried expression.

Surprised and momentarily touched by his concern, Ben waved him off with a shallow, shuddering breath, his thoughts racing like flaming heat through his body.

Was she _here_ somewhere, down in the crowd of onlookers?

Why wouldn’t she be? She loved Padmé almost as much as he had, if one could even put a weight on that sort of thing, and Ben guessed there was a good possibility they’d stayed in touch after Padmé had moved to Hosnia and Rey — Rey clearly hadn’t.

Not after he’d all but told her to kriff off like the worst human being on the planet, even while his own heart was breaking.

Swallowing back a lump of heartache and regret in his throat, Ben wrapped his arms around his chest and forced himself to stare at his grandmother’s casket rather than hungrily scan the all but indistinguishable features of the crowd, many of whom were hidden behind pillars and out of his line of sight anyway.

If Rey was here, he’d never find her, not without the help of the Force. And he… he sure as hell wasn't prepared for that, yet, either, not if the way his heart was thudding rapidly and hollowly and his skin was clamming but his face was hot and his brain wasn’t fully functioning and he was suddenly _kriffing_ _petrified_ were any indication.

No, there was more — _so_ much more to consider around what Padmé had told him this very last time, first. But not now. Now, he needed to be here for his grandmother as, even in death, she had always been there for him.

He allowed himself to be open to the Priestesses' final words about giving and charity, love and kindness, passing and new life, and a legacy, he noticed, that never once mentioned Darth Vader, even though Padmé’s life had at one point been explicitly entwined with his.

It gave Ben the smallest spark of hope that there could be some future, though he didn't yet know how to achieve it or get there, where that part of his own legacy, of what and who people _saw_ when they looked at him, could be left behind as well.

At some point, he even slowly sat back down in the leather chair that Chewie had released him from. He was unused to the presence of other human beings in the small, lonely spaces he usually occupied, and his attention was drawn from the conclusion of the funeral rites to the greying men he’d briefly idolized as a child. Chewie wore an engrossed expression of sorrowful contemplation, while Han had shoved his chair back slightly, legs propped up on the bottom stone lip of one of the window slits.  


Here with him.

They were still… here with him.     


Han must have sensed his stare, because he cocked his head, then turned toward Ben. Ben froze, trying to school the unconcealed amazement he knew was in his expression. He couldn’t quite tear his gaze away, but he didn't know how to express the full extent of the gratitude he was feeling, either -- particularly without words.

After a moment, his father grinned, crookedly. When Ben's lips tentatively moved in the ever-so-slight, largely foreign upward motion of the faintest, weakest of smiles in return, Han threw him a wink, slapping him on his shoulder hard enough that the force of it sent Ben's hair careering forward slightly. Then he turned back to the Great Hall, taking another gulp from the flask.

Ben let out a soft breath, his shoulders slumping as quickly at they’d tensed.

There was still so much pain and unresolved anger to navigate, still so many hurts left to heal. But this…

This felt like a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter is up and I could not be more excited! (Or surprised, but I managed to sneak it in between studying!) Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for the comments and well-wishes you sent at the end of the last chapter. I know it sounds like a shameless ploy, but they really do help us authors feel fueled to write faster if we at all can. I am starting to recover at last, and I am so grateful for the support you gave where that was concerned, too.
> 
> I wanted to include Padme's funeral, so this is a bit of a one-shot (hence the "four days ago") before we continue along with the main plot of the story. I'm going to be traveling for work all next week, so the next chapter will unfortunately not be as quick as this one!


End file.
